Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
GOG.com wasn’t finished with the six games they added yesterday.
Joining the growing LucasArts library are three more titles. Empire at War and Rebellion are a pair of popular strategy game titles. Meanwhile, Rogue Squadron 3D was the arcade combat flight simulator enjoyed by gamers in the 90s with access to a PC or a Nintendo 64.
Head over to GOG to see the complete collection from LucasArts
The shuttering of LucasArts still stings for a lot of fans. Many hold Disney accountable for closing the venerable game studio, but did problems for the developer begin before the sale? According to a Kotaku profile by Jason Schreier, LucasArts was in trouble years before Disney came into the picture.
Over the last five months, I’ve talked to a dozen people connected to LucasArts, including ex-employees at the company’s highest levels, in an attempt to figure out just how the studio collapsed. Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity. They told me about the failed deals, the drastic shifts in direction, the cancelled projects with codenames likeSmuggler and Outpost. They told me the stories behind the fantastic-looking Star Wars 1313and the multi-tiered plans for a new Battlefront starting with the multiplayer game known asStar Wars: First Assault.
All of these people helped paint a single picture: Even before Disney purchased LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, in November of 2012, the studio faced serious issues. LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels.
It may not have been just 1313 and First Assault that wound up meeting untimely demises either:
In news that will certainly crush anyone who enjoyed LucasArts-branded adventure games, the team at LucasArts Singapore was working on a remastered version of the classic point-and-click game Day of the Tentacle, according to three people familiar with that project. Like the special editions of the first two Monkey Island games, released in 2009 and 2010, the remastered Day of the Tentacle would be pseudo-3D, with remade background art and cut-scenes redone to run at 30 frames per second…
…The list of cancelled projects goes on and on. There was Smuggler, a game designed for cross-platform multiplayer that would let you play as a customizable character within the Star Warsuniverse, smuggling and trading between Facebook, tablets, and consoles.P
There was Outpost, the Star Wars take on Zynga’s FarmVille that would let players build empires, one click at a time.P
There was Death Star, the iOS game in which you’d get to control your very own version of the Empire’s iconic space station.P
There was the online service that would be LucasArts’ very own version of Origin, EA’s network for distributing games and servicing online multiplayer. Like Origin for EA, this LucasArts-branded network would help the company distribute Star Wars games and in-app purchases. According to one person familiar with plans for this network, it would have launched alongside Star Wars: First Assault, which would have had some sort of microtransaction store.
Shortly after LucasArts closed, I cautioned fans not to blame Disney. The anger was understandable, the studio closure came right on the heels of The Clone Wars getting cancelled. From my outside perspective, it looked as if LucasArts had been in trouble for years and issues had cropped up almost a decade earlier. This piece by Kotaku lends more to the idea that the company had merely been on life support from Lucasfilm for some time.
Be sure to read the entire Kotaku profile, there’s a whole lot more there that paints a much clearer picture that the problems that befell LucasArts come from within, not from Disney.
Reaction to yesterday’s news that Lucasfilm will be licensing the Star Wars IP exclusively to publisher Electronic Arts was, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. First off were people happy that there were going to be new Star Wars games at all. Then there was the anti-EA crowd upset that Disney was licensing to the least popular company in the gaming industry. So what is it? Good news for fans, or Disney making a mistake and hurting fans?
Some assorted thoughts…
Boil it down and I just can’t find much to be upset about. There is way more good news than there is bad news involved in this announcement. As of right now, three top-notch studios are going to get to work on the Star Wars IP and I, for one, can’t wait to see what they do with it.
When LucasArts was closed down, Disney and Lucasfilm said that the Star Wars IP would move towards a licensing model with out-of-house talent handling development duties. Fans were skeptical that anything would come out of this, naturally. Today Lucasfilm put those concerns to bed with the announcement that publisher Electronic Arts has been selected for an exclusive multi-year game deal.
Today it was announced that Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney Interactive are entering into a multi-year, multi-title exclusive licensing agreement with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) for the creation of new high quality Star Wars games spanning multiple genres for console, PC, mobile, and tablets.
Industry leaders and creators of best-in-class blockbuster games, the development and publishing teams at EA will collaborate with the creative teams at Lucasfilm to provide audiences with all-new gaming experiences set in the ever-expanding Star Wars galaxy. As part of the agreement, EA studio teams DICE (Battlefield series) and Visceral (Dead Space series) will join BioWare (Mass Effect series, Star Wars: The Old Republic) in the development of new Star Wars games.
“Our number one objective was to find a developer who could consistently deliver our fans great Star Wars games for years to come,” said Kathleen Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm. “When we looked at the talent of the teams that EA was committing to our games and the quality of their vision for Star Wars, the choice was clear.”
While EA studios will develop for the core Star Wars gaming audience, Disney Interactive will focus on delivering new Star Wars games for casual audiences on mobile, social, tablet, and online gaming platforms.
“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said John Pleasants, co-president of Disney Interactive. “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to fans around the world.”
“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. “Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”
More information, including titles in development, will be announced in the coming months. Continue to check StarWars.com for updates on the future of Star Wars gaming.
Take a moment to look at the studios that are going to be involved. DICE, Visceral Studios, and Bioware. These are three big-name players that command a lot of respect in the gaming community and have produced some incredible game portfolios. Lucasarts may be gone, but the Star Wars gaming IP is perhaps in better shape than it has been in years.
Not even the Mouse House is immune, unfortunately. According to Variety, Disney has begun the process of laying off at least 150 workers at Walt Disney Studios. Some of the affected employees are part of the animation division, marking yet another company that has been forced to downsize their entertainment arms.
At this point, it appears to be an industry-wide thing. The powerhouse Tippett Studios underwent layoffs a few weeks ago. Last week noted game developer and publisher Square Enix announced that they were eliminating a number of jobs from their Los Angeles studio as part of a corporate re-organization. This is just a sample of the hard times the entertainment industry has found themselves in lately.
While it’s easy for many fans to get angry with Disney for they layoffs at both Lucasfilm Animation and LucasArts, we have to understand that there simply wasn’t any malice involved with those decisions. The entertainment industry is in a state of upheaval right now and that’s forcing these studios to make some uncomfortable choices that lead to re-orgs and layoffs. Given the state of the industry right now, some of this restructuring could have happened even if George Lucas still owned the company.
On this episode of Tosche Station Radio, the hosts are joined by staff writer Bria and Aaron Goins for a continuity throwdown!
Kicking off the show, Nanci highlights what’s New on the Blog. Shane discussed Bruce Timm leaving DC. For that wonderful holiday known as April Fools, we asked our friend and Star Wars newbie Lisa what she’d like to see in the Sequel Trilogy. Brian called bullshit on the idea that multiple universes can’t exist simultaneously in Star Wars. He also wrote about the Lucasarts closing shop.
In Fixer’s Flash, Nanci made an impromptu trip to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. She’s also kept herself busy reading Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn as well as the Orion Offensive by John Jackson Miller. Somehow in all that, she found the time to finish the first draft of her newest novel, Seer. Brian’s been working through his comic backlog but also started reading Season of Passage by Christopher Pike. Bria continued on her journey aboard the Waru Express by starting the New Jedi Order. She’s also been keeping busy at her other blog, the White Hot Room.
Deak’s Dirt starts with sad the sad news: LucasArts is shutting down. Also ILM employees were also laid off in the process. In convention news from Wondercon, Dark Horse is adapting The Star Wars based on Lucas’s original draft for A New Hope. Features older General Luke Skywalker, Anakin Starkiller, and Darth Vader (not a Sith, not in the suit). Meanwhile, there’s an excerpt for Into the Void by Tim Lebbon over on the Random House website, as well as the finished jacket. The This Is Madness bracket continued on, but are the hosts still paying attention to it? Harry Markov, Science Fiction Frequency Launches ‘Women in Genre’ Month, an effort to raise awareness and celebrate the women working in genre fiction. Doctor Who returned from hiatus and announced John Hurt would be guesting. In addition, BBC confirmed two guest stars for the 50th anniversary episode Game of Thrones also returned to the airwaves. Finally, there was more sad news as legendary film critic Roger Ebert passed away Thursday afternoon.
This week on Camie’s Concerns, the hosts rounded up Bria from our blog and White Hot Room as well as Aaron Goins of the Star Wars Bookworms podcast and the Star Wars Report blog to discuss the Sequel Trilogy, the Expanded Universe, and how they both can (or can’t) get along. Gear up for a bit of a friendly throwdown as the group discuss EU characters, the concept of the Multiverse, and whether or not Marvel is a good model for Star Wars moving forward.
Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of Majestic Giraffe Productions. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.
This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and Audible.com.
To say fan reaction to the closure of long-time game developer and publisher LucasArts was strong would be an understatement. Emotions ranged from sadness to outright anger at new parent company Disney for shuttering the studio responsible for critically acclaimed titles like TIE Fighter, The Dig, and Escape from Monkey Island. Through the years, this division of the Lucasfilm brand had been responsible for numerous well received games that became benchmarks for the industry as a whole. It’s understandable, then, that fans of the company are bewildered as to why Disney would close down such a prolific studio and monument to gaming history.
While a glance through their catalog reveals a studio that has had more success than the vast majority of their competitors, a deeper look reveals that LucasArts set themselves on a risky path nearly a decade ago.
Kotaku is reporting that Disney has officially shut down Lucasarts and laid off all employees.
Given the lingering hard feelings over Lucasfilm Animation and the cancellation of The Clone Wars, it’s easy to get upset at Disney. I would caution against it, however. Lucasarts was a development studio that was in trouble years before Disney even came into the picture. The number of titles they released plummeted around 2006-2007 and the marquee titles they did release were not well received critically. The Force Unleashed and its sequel were regarded as middling titles and The Old Republic was a huge expenditure that failed to put a dent in the MMO market.
There’s also this to consider:
LucasArts just announced It is moving to a licensing model for games, moving away from development.
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) April 3, 2013
Lucasarts has been a development studio in trouble for years. This studio getting shut down doesn’t mean the end of Star Wars games. If anything, I view it as a hopeful thing. For whatever reason, they have been unable to produce quality products internally for a number of years and they probably could have and should have been closed down sooner to redistribute that valuable IP.
If Disney is licensing the Star Wars IP now to other studios, that could be great news for fans.
Edit: Official statement from Lucasfilm
GameInformer received a statement from Lucasfilm discussing the closure of the studio.
“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.”
In addition, Kotaku is now reporting that Star Wars 1313 and First Assault have been canceled
Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio’s current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more.
At E3 last year, attendees were given a glimpse at the next AAA title LucasArts was working on. Titled Star Wars: 1313, the game was billed as an inter-trilogy action adventure that might be able to revive the struggling development studio. A cinematic trailer was shown and then … little was said about the project.
There’s no telling how much development had gone into the product beyond the pre-rendered video they had shown. Fans began to get concerned as the months after E3 passed without any additional word. One theory was that LucasArts was being quiet because the title was going to be a launch game on a Next Generation platform, but when Sony’s Playstation 4 press conference came and went without any additional word on the game’s status, Kotaku began to investigate. According to their sources, things are not looking good for 1313.
For weeks we’ve heard from multiple sources that the Disney purchase of LucasFilm (which includes LucasArts) has reoriented the company’s gaming division. The focus is on the new trilogy, not on material that is unrelated to the planned JJ Abrams-directed Star Wars: Episode VII. 1313‘s developers may still be fervently plugging away, for all we know. As LucasArts says, the game “continues production.” But it sounds from our sources like it’s not currently moving forward in any official capacity.
The game’s future is very much in doubt at this point. For more, read the entire article over at Kotaku.