Disney shuts down Lucasarts

http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down...m_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

Thank you Disney. First The Clone Wars and now this. I have a bad feeling about this.

 

It's gonna be ok, guys. It's a time of transition which can be uncomfortable but necessary.

What's unfortunate is that it feels like the bulk of the news now is about cancellations etc.. It'd do a lot of good for the folks around here to get more news about what's to be created.

I do think good things are coming.

 

I feel bad for the 150+ people who lost their jobs. However, LucasArts has been artistically a shell of its former self for years. They outsourced most of their production and primarily dealt with design and supervision. And they had numerous turnover at the top, lost their best developers, and suffered from a dearth of non-SW related original content. The economic downturn and game industry downturn didn't help either.

All of these things finally caught up with LucasArts.

It was a great run. They contributed some classic games.

 

First The Clone Wars and now this?

 

Was truly looking forward to Star Wars: 1313...

RIP Lucasarts.

 

A creatively stagnant studio that hasn't put out a hit in years is going down the tubes? What a shock!

No really, that wasn't sarcasm, it was pleasant surprise.

And really, it's not like this is going to put the kibosh on Star Wars games. The Old Republic is still going, they only had one of their publishers shut down and they'll probably move on to a Disney owned label if they don't stay entirely under Electronic Arts.

First entry in my wish list: A remake of Jedi Outcast/Academy in a non-crap version of the Quake engine it used.

 

Terrible news. I read it somewhere else and came here hoping that it is a delayed April fool. Shocked!

Edit: Thought that they have shut down LucasFilm. Except 1313 I really don't care, they totally deserved this after the cancellation of Kotor 3 and because they never gave us TFU III. Also, most of the stuff anyway was outsourced so I don't think that is that bad.

 

It might end up being a good thing. They are just changing the business model and now will focus on licensing out the title to other publishers. We could see the quality of the games increase if they are protective of the title.

 

I can't say I didn't see this one coming...

 

I trusted them to fix it!

 

Better games will result from this for sure. Designers will have to compete for rights. This news should be celebrated!

 

Of course they were going to dismantle and transform LFL; that was and is a foregone conclusion. I'm not asking this specifically to you, but to the room in general, so please take no offense; your phrasing simply gave me a wonderful opening (my thanks) for my question: why is it so hard for people to see and accept that this is both necessary and proper, in addition to being the way business is supposed to function when it is functioning correctly? Reform of the company has been needed for years. Is it so hard to believe that LFL was malfunctioning from top to bottom and needed to be dismantled and transformed if it were to have a chance of long-term survival? I'm a Star Wars fan and I was never surprised.

 

Because we're fans. That's why we're fan(atics). We're pretty extreme, devout followers.

As objectively as I can be(as a lover of ILM, Star Wars, and all the other things Lucas), Lucasfilm has a mixed record when it comes to work environment, advancement, etc. All you have to do is talk to several alum and a mixed reaction comes out of it. This flies in the face of fan expectations, who expect a corporation to be just as great as the movies that helped build that corporation. But it is not exactly the case.
So, I hope Disney goes through the upper and middle management with a fine-toothed comb and revamps the whole culture top to bottom.

It's time. Heck, it should have been done a year or so after ROTS. Things had grown stale. Managerial turf wars and lack of direction had set in.

 

Right, let's hope the original non-SW IP is able to be licensed to the "correct" people at a reasonable price.

Ron Gilbert has made no secret that he would love to be able to make a new Monkey Island game.

 

Also, this puts things in perspective (an ex-employee post from a year ago):

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/p857l/please_lucasarts/c3nkqn2

 

And I would love to play it!

 

I wouldn't be shocked if Telltale games went after Monkey Island, I mean, they got their hands on Back to the Future after all, how much harder would this be?

 

That seems unlikely.

http://mixnmojo.com/news/Future-looking-Telltale-says-the-key-word-is-modern-going-forward

They've let the Kings Quest license lapse too. This announcement may change their interest in LucasArts properties, but it seems their focus has shifted.

 

Good riddance! Once upon a time I loved LucasArts, they were a factory of creativity and awesome, putting out all sorts of great stuff.

Then, they decided to cancel everything original, they threw Grim Fandango in the trash, they threw Full Throttle in the trash, and just continued trashing and abandoning originality & creativity altogether.

Instead, they decided to become a "Star Wars-only Factory", putting out (lots of crappy) Star Wars games every year or two. Sometimes they had something decent like Star Wars: Battlefront, but then they would make completely retarded decisions like allowing The Old Republic instead of KOTOR 3 (which is what everybody wanted).

LucasArts were once a place of creative vision and artistic flair, then everybody responsible for that left and they became a hollow place that was super disrespectful to fans.

The LucasArts gamers among us all knew and loved, has been gone for a very long time.

So I say, GOOD RIDDANCE, LUCASARTS! DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT!

 

Real shame to hear about this - due to the fact the future Star Wars titles did actually look quite exciting, and a step up from what we've had recently. I am sure they will licence out titles like they did with 'KOTOR' to Bioware.

At least we have the existing games, good or bad as they may be. 'Battlefront 1 & 2', 'Jedi Knight', 'The Force Unleashed'...

But I'm always thankful we got the real cream of LucasArts gaming with titles such as 'The Secret Of Monkey Island' and the point and click graphic adventures that dominated my childhood.

 

Easily one of the seminal gaming developers of the 1990s along with ID, Capcom, Eidos and 3DR. For me, Lucasarts gave me my appreciation of adventure games. Namely Day Of The Tentacle, Sam and Max and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis were the staples of my gaming days back then. Their flight simulators were pretty neat along with their Doom inspired, Dark Forces. Sadly, their days of innovation ended at the beginning of the 2000s when they began abandoning the likes of Full Throttle, Sam and Max, and Grim Fandango. Even their treatment of the Indiana Jones suffered because they settled for a second rate Tomb Raider type of approach where gameplay and story telling took a backseat to what made their games in the 1990s great.

As sad as I am to see them go, their product over the previous decade has been mediocre at best and was getting to a point where it undid their legacy as good developers in the 1990s because they were getting further and further away from what made me admire them so much. So, the memories will always be there.

 

True words there TWT, a lot of good memories but I agree with your point about them being undone by churning out standard games with no real imagination based around 1 or 2 sole ideas.

 

...putting to rest the rumor that these companies somehow have special autonomy. It's good to see it proven that Disney has the final word. This bodes well for Episode VII.

 

Products will increase in quality because of this.