VIDEO Lucasarts to be shut down by Disney

....and I welcome those licensed games. I stated earlier Lucasarts being shut down was a good thing

 

R.I.P LucasArts​

​

 

Umm... no. Err, I guess if you want LucasArts games, yeah, I guess you're S.O.L... but if you want good Star Wars games, the chances of getting them are even better now, licensed to better developers. Why it matters where they're developed, I don't know.

...and that means you two are on the same page, though you did just talk about the franchise bloat and state significant preference for the films.

Lots of people seem to think that films are the all-important thing, as if it's a given... but I think the world is changing on that front. If you ask me, I'm far more interested in TV or a really good RPG. I get much more out of The Clone Wars, Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, or hell... Adventure Time, for that matter... than I do out of a single 2-to-2.5 hour film. Especially when we're talking about a franchise which can never truly replicate the magic of its original entries.

 

Yes, media is in a strange state at the moment.

Looking at The Walking Dead, some people consider the game to have a better story than the TV show!

 

Exactly -- sure there are the films, but I'm referring to the shorter term. I mean seriously, how many of us are on these forums just to rehash the films?

 

Exactly this ^^^

Disney is killing my childhood!! But seriously, I feel the same way. I was a huge X-Wing & TIE Fighter fan. I actually branched out to Monkey Island & Full Throttle shortly after. Monkey Island was one of the funniest adventure games I had ever played and Full Throttle influenced me to like motorcycles which lasted well into adulthood (and still does). Dark Forces was awesome. Who can forget the stormtroopers using the urinals?!

Some will say "well it's a good business move by Disney". I say it's about choice. They could have chosen to keep Lucasarts and actually do a good re-org and bring the company back to greatness. Instead they did the regular soulless business move and closed it's doors. Lucasarts (using Disney's resources) could have been a big competitor in the gaming market, but instead Disney will go the "licensing" route. To me that shows lack of ownership of the bran and the product.

Again I have to say was all this worth it? Closing Lucas Animation? Closing Lucas Arts? Canceling all shows? All 3D releases? Just for the sake of "Episode 7 being great?" If your answer is "yes", then you are very naive. Even if you are the biggest J.J. Abrams fanboy, to put all your eggs in the "Episode 7 Basket" is pretty risky as a fan. It's like Disney is "starving" us of Star Wars so when EP7 is released, we'll be so deprived we'll think anything turned out is great.

The darktimes are here folks. Get used to it.

 

Dark Forces, TIE Fighter, Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic, Empire at War, Rebel Assault, Rogue Squadron represented the best games series in the SW saga.
Add to that Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max.
That was the good, old-school Lucasarts.

But then, something changed. Force Unleashed, The Old Republic, Star Wars Kinect represented the moment Lucasarts went down the quick and easy path. And they became an agent of evil.
Now they're no more. But I don't feel sorry for the company itself, but rather for the people who lost their jobs.
Hopefully Disney won't focus so much on...ugh...social gaming and give some talented studios the job of making some better games.

 

That's not strictly true. LucasArts had to hire developers; whether those developers cared about the franchise, who knows? But now all those independent development team heads who really do love Star Wars, as fans like you and me, can create something that speaks to all of us much more than Star Wars Kinect and the other junk they've put out lately.

We're not saying "it's a good business move, so deal with it..." We're saying "it's a good business move, AND it's good for the quality of the games..." I think your fears would be legitimate if Disney decided to develop stuff in-house with Disney Interactive.

 

LucasArts has been rotten for a long time. Read this, from a year ago...

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

 

I have mixed feelings about this

LA has been a shadow of it's former self for several years. I was hoping Disney would get rid of those in charge of LA and put the right people in place and there would at long last be some redemption. Now that will never happen. Not to mention 1313 and FA are almost surely dead.

 

Actually, they're working on Project Eternity. (InXile is doing Torment)

But there is another team working on the South Park RPG. That's going to be done soon. So when that project is over, it would be nice for those people to have another project to work on ready to go, eh? Like, I dunno, a Star Wars RPG? Just sayin'...

 

LucasArts was a great company, Dark Forces is one of my favorites. I never understood some of their reasoning when it came to the next generation. I bought a 360 solely for the next-gen Indiana Jones and Star Wars(the Force Unleashed) games (well their was Halo 3 and a few others, but mainly the next-gen Lucasarts) that I was so excited about. But the Indiana Jones game seemingly ended up a Wii/PS2 exclusive...and TFU was well....TFU.

I have pure nostalgia love for LA especially on their 90s/early 2000s titles but they had grown into a shadow of their former self indeed in recent years. Its sad.

 

If all Disney really wanted was the heart they might as well just have bought that instead of buying the whole body and systematically lopping off every piece they didn't want.

 

I'm inclined to agree with everyone else. It truly is sad for more layoffs...

..but Lucasarts as a whole was pretty much undead and zombified for a while. Maybe in the hands of other companies Star Wars games can see a bright future.

At least we have 90's Lucasarts memories to look back upon. As much as I utterly despite nostalgia.

On a minor note, forgive my rudeness, but KILLING your childhood? Only because you let companies kill them. You can choose to be bothered by it or just remember those good times.

 

This.

If the PT sussed out the nitpickers/exaggerators from the OT generation, then this Disney buyout seems to be sussing out the nitpickers/exaggerators from the PT generation. I, for one, think the real problem is not the fan divisions/preferences themselves, but the dramatic approach to those divisions.

Now, my position on certain developments is well-understood... but I've spent enough years hearing old guys say that Lucas raped their childhoods, and I don't want to go on for another 15 years hearing the young folks say Disney raped their childhoods. We've been through this before, and we don't need it. Complain, campaign, whatever you wanna do... but no more claims about killing/raping/(other hyperbolic transitive verb) anybody's childhood. Nobody can do anything to your childhood, unless you're still a child... and if you're a child, you'll probably pretty much enjoy whatever Star Wars stuff is plopped down in front of you. So, enough. Let's get ourselves enlightened up in here.

 

I can't really get behind feeling sad for the guys who we're laid off, because I don't think it would be a career killer for any of the guys there anyway. Surely Lucasarts wasn't a mecca for game industry professionals to show off their skills and creativity.

I don't exactly have insider info on the subject, but if you're a 3D graphic artist, game designer, or writer working for Lucasarts would seem like career and creative limbo to me. What kind of weight would "I worked on the critically panned Force Unleashed sequel" have in the ol' resume.

Now these guys might be able to work for studio's where they'll actually get noticed and, y'know, actually work on games.

 

It lasts about 5-6 hours. It is probably the most rushed game in the entire history of video gaming, it is very repetitive and many stuff you can't even understand. During the entire game, I was thinking what the hell is going on in the other side (Juno). The book is decent and much better.

 

Perhaps, but we'll see.

It doesn't really matter, I'm just saying it's a shame they fell off their high horse.

 

I still take issue with everyone who says "just wait and see, Disney will do good things". I guess that wait and see is the summer of 2015? So far since October there hasn't been one positive thing released with the exception of just an announcement of "EP7" in 2015. I guess if you want to be positive, and be "Star Wars Less" for 2 years, then be my guest. I'm not a fan of that "lemming" type attitude. I want to see REAL positives from Disney as it pertains to SW. Announce something else besides their so called "good business practices". People bag on how "Lucasarts" sucked, but they fail to see "Lucas Learning" was a subdivision of that as well.

So far all we have gotten was "good corporate business" moves:

Closure of Lucas animation
Premature end of The Clone Wars
3D Releases cancelled
Detours cancelled
Closure of Lucas Arts and ALL games in development
Closure of Lucas Learning (by proxy of Lucas Arts closure)
Dark Horse contract expiring

Yeah, losing all that was worth getting J.J. Abrams as a director. (read that as sarcasm). Even if you are devoid of any emotion at the loss of that list because "you could careless" and all you care about is "a great EP7", then look at it as SW is leaving the public eye. We could have had 3 more seasons of Clone Wars. We could have had the release of 1313. We could have had some comic release with Detours. We could have had the PT in 3D. Now we have NOTHING. Nothing for 2 years. You'd think a juggernaut like Disney could do more than just one thing over the next 3 years, but apparently they can't. Or worse, they don't want too.

EDIT:
I'm also not looking at this as "black" or "white". I'm not saying you have to be a Disney die hard fanboy, or a "it's all over for Star Wars" person. I'm saying judge the acts of Disney. Exclude "business moves", what have they've done possitive so far? Have they announced a new TV series? A game? New toys? Anything? Maybe a ride at Disney? Some books? Anything? No, all they announced was EP7, and so far, don't expect anything until 2015.. To me that is unacceptable, and it should be to you as well.

 

If licensed out to the right developers, I honestly think we could get some great Star Wars games. The best is yet to come.

 

Sure, because those Marvel tie-in games have all been amazing.

 

Is it just me, or does anybody else feels relieved that LA is gone? It's been almost ten years since they've released a good game (last one being republic commando, and imo tfu 1 was ok, but not as good as other sw games).

 

I will gladly trade Detours, very poor Lucasarts games, and yet another dragged out season of the Clone Wars for a new Star Wars movie. Maybe my view is a bit skewed because I'm almost 40 and Star Wars will always be about the 2 hour experience of a movie since that is what I grew up on (plus the Marvel comics). That being said, it has already been stated that a new animated series is in the work, plus possibly a live action show (which btw Lucasfilm had dangled in our faces for YEARS but were never able to get out of development hell), and there will still be video games coming out. The Dark Horse contract expiring has nothing to do with Disney, the Del Rey contract is also expiring. Both of those contracts were made long before the sale, why did you even use that to pad your list? Although the EU is the next thing that needs to be fixed and cleaned up, but that is a discussion for another forum.

I've said it several times on other boards, but Detours was a clear indication that Star Wars was going to die or become a huge irrelevant joke. Producing a parody of yourself is basically admitting it had become a huge bloated creature that is now satisfied on devouring itself. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as being a huge loss when it got shelved, it was a very smart move.

 

Life was a game to them. And they played it, by their own rules.
They were a mystery to most of us...
And yet, an inspiration to us all.

They gave us power.
They gave us freedom.
They gave us wings!
...they gave us wheels.

Thank you, Lucasarts, for giving us a dream...
...that will never die.

 

No, the Dark Times were 1986-1991, when there was almost NO new Star Wars content except for a handful of West End Games sourcebooks and 3 lousy 3-D comics from Blackthorne. No new movies on the horizon, no new animated show in the works, not even a novel, nothing. It was actually depressing to be a Star Wars fan back then. Right now isn't even close. I'd say it's the exact opposite.

Only in this day and age of instant gratification, eroded patience, and entitlement due to smartphones and the internet would waiting 2 years for a movie to come out be seen as us being "starved" and "deprived" of something. I don't remember it being a problem waiting 3 years between Empire and Jedi when I was a kid....excited and eager would be pretty apt though. Is that kind of feeling dissipating from fandom now??? We want something NOW, the quality of it be damned.