Bad news for Electronic Arts, Bioware, and Lucasarts. Their massively-online Star Wars IP is having a very hard time retaining subscribers as 400,000 have left the virtual universe according to an EA earnings statement.
To put this into perspective, subscriber totals peaked around 1.7 million and have crashed down to 1.3 million. Nearly 25% of subscribers have bolted since the game’s launch. Those are numbers that no one involved with the development of the game ever wanted to see, especially this early in the game’s life.
You have to wonder, would a proper Knights of the Old Republic III have been a better choice in the long run?
The majority of my teen years sucked. I was one of those kids who was a permanent outcast—I was geeky and nerdy, and for a teenage girl, that can be the kiss of death. I had two friends in middle school, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for Star Wars.
But I wanted to be part of the cliques. I wanted boys to notice me, not because I was weird, but because they noticed me. Every time I was skipped over for an invitation to a party, left out of a social activity, or out and out ignored, I felt like I was being stabbed in the heart. We take these things more seriously when we’re 13.
TPM had just come out. My best friend and I soaked up every piece of information The Star Wars Insider had to offer. And most importantly, for Christmas in 1999, my aunt bought me Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s Young Jedi Knights: Shards of Alderaan.
I immediately fell in love with the character of Tenel Ka. She was strong, she chose who she wanted to be, and she got past being different to find acceptance. I wanted to be Tenel Ka.
As I got older, I moved on to the adult novels, and I wanted to be Mara Jade. She was even better than Tenel Ka, because Mara had emotions and wasn’t afraid to show them. She was who she wanted to be, with no apologies.
It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that there were other people like me, but by the time I got there, I’d finally come to grips with the idea that I could be whoever I wanted to be, thanks primarily to the characters of Tenel Ka and Mara Jade.
Tonight we’re playing around with a potentially new feature on the blog in which I dig into my background as an ex-music major.* Each week, the goal is to dissect one song from a soundtrack (usually StarWars) and break down just why its effective. Or just what I like about it. First on the docket, the main title theme from Star Wars.
*Why ex? Sadly, computer science pays better.
Despite being one of his most well-known pieces, this is actually a departure from many of the musical devices Williams is most famous for. A good comparison would be listening to this and then listening to the theme from the NBC Nightly News theme…
So many of his pieces feature very contemporary bursts and accents over the top of the melody. In NBC’s theme, you can hear the mid/high brass and mid/high woodwinds at the beginning coming in with these quick hits of texture while the strings provide the melody (the ‘da da dah dat da dat dah’). This is something Williams is famous for, those little touches.
The main title theme from Star Wars is just as powerful, but for different reasons.
This is much more of a strong fanfare that Williams himself describes as being symbolic of the heroic components of the Star Wars saga. Wookieepedia has a wonderful little writeup of how the structuring of the melody itself ties into that concept.
If you’re familiar with basic theory and notation, you can see that this piece opens by jumping up a fifth, or reaching and grasping for something on high. Unable to quite attain that goal, it moves into a descending triplet as the music gathers its strength and momentum for another go at that goal. It succeeds by jumping a full octave above that initial note and then repeats as a sort of reassurance that the music truly achieved that goal. That’s just the symbolism in the first three measures.
This is a piece that is carried by the distinct line between the melody and the harmony. The sections not responsible for the harmony almost become the percussion section, driving the fanfare along while the melody soars over the top. While the strings get their moments, Williams allowed the brass to truly shine as the horns and trumpets set the tone for the soundtrack and the film as a whole. Nothing quite says grandeur like a trumpet reaching those highs.
For Williams, this is almost an odd composition when compared to his larger body of work just because of how straight-ahead it is. It’s a credit to him that he put his usual conventions to the side to write the piece that needed to be written, though. Star Wars needed to start with a bang, and the driving, powerful fanfare that blares as the logo appears accomplishes just that.
USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.
Writer John Jackson Miller is just one of many guys who digs that galaxy far, far away, and he’s going way, way back in it for his new five-issue Dark Horse Comics series Star Wars: The Lost Tribe of the Sith, launching Aug. 8.
The comic removes three aspects that are some of the most essential of the Star Wars films — technology, starships and Jedi knights — and focuses on the Tribe, an ancient group of Sith believers stranded on a remote planet for 5,000 years. (The Sith, by the way, tap into the dark side of the Force.)
The Lost Tribe of the Sith project began three years ago with the Fate of the Jedi novel series, which found this group escaping their prison in the time of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker and threatening the galaxy.
The official site has gotten their hands on a whole boatload of Expanded Universe shininess including a nifty Essential Guide to Warfare art timelapse video, an essay from the Fate of the Jedi authors, and a cover and preview from the new Darth Maul: Death Sentencecomic from Dark Horse.
Most importantly, however, is the entire second chapter from one of the year’s most anticipated novels: Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels.
Brace yourselves, the news drought appears to be ending today.
The official Celebration VI website has confirmed that Princess Leia herself will be in attendance this year. Also in the fold are two incarnations of Boba Fett, Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan.
Expect more news to drop, as today is the Somewhat Randomly Selected Day of Star Wars Celebration That Has Been Highly Influenced by a Pretty Awful Pun.
As your boyfriend—or brother or father or uncle—probably told you, Return of the Jedi is hitting theatres this Friday. And you, dutiful girlfriend—and sister and daughter and niece—are attending. But you hate sci-fi movies and practically fell asleep during the previous two Star Wars films. (How have they possibly made a third? It’s so boring! You don’t care that Star Wars is the biggest grossing film of all time. You liked Annie Hall so much better.
But don’t fret, ladies. This is the last of the Star Wars films, so after this, you can stop pretending to care about this effects-laden piece of “cinema.” But to get you through Return of the Jedi without having to ask a ton of questions (just in case you’ve managed to stay awake the entire time), we’ve created a streamlined girl’s guide to the galaxy far, far away. (That’s nerd speak for the Star Wars galaxy.)
USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.
Brace yourselves, the news drought appears to be ending today.