Disney Shuts Down LucasArts

http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749

by Lightning • 13 years ago

544 239 13 years ago

kanja• 13 years ago

Were they not making a profit? It's hard for me to see the logic behind this decision - I thought the starwars games were all pulling in a decent amount. The other ip as well. What a shame.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

And I believe that's what killed them

'Management' shut down everything that was not a SW game some time ago.

Gone were all the other game lines.

The Lucasarts of 15 years ago will be sorely missed.

(Except configuring your SB card with setup.exe)

sampsonjs• 13 years ago

Disnye has its own "interactive" arm, it's not like they can't farm out Star Wars videogames from there, so it's not hard to see the logic.

smtddr• 13 years ago

>>looks at the calendar>>

Oh %$#@!, it's not April 1st anymore...

This can't be happening. :(

I was hoping the title was sensational and that they're just moving the staff to a Disney corp building. But the article is confirming the worse case. How can this be?! I'm not a starwars fan, but I'm pretty sure that whole thing is still making money on t-shirts & mugs & stuff.... right?!

loganfrederick• 13 years ago

LucasArts, AFAIK, is just the videogame studio division of LucasFilm. I'm sure the merchandise is still making plenty of money.

illuminate• 13 years ago

LucasArts was the only part of his products that many people care about anymore!

jechen• 13 years ago

This marks the first time I've felt genuinely saddened by the shutdown of a game studio. LucasArts made some of the best games I played as a kid, it's a shame they couldn't follow up their legacy in recent years. :(

untog• 13 years ago

Eh. I was more disappointed when Westwood bit the dust. In all honesty, LucasArts was long, long past it's golden era.

Though I'm currently playing through Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my way to and from work, on my phone, via SCUMM. I'll always be grateful for that.

spangborn• 13 years ago

I miss the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series, especially the awesome X-Wing vs TIE Fighter game. I would have loved to see a modern remake of those games.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

>> it's a shame they couldn't follow up their legacy in recent years.

Agreed, but it's worth keeping in mind that "recent years" in this case means over a decade. LucasArts pumped out hordes of sub-par games, quickly shoe-horning various game paradigms into the star wars universe.

As much as I feel nostalgic towards the hey-day of old, the article is spot on in pointing out that all their recent greats (KOTOR, etc.) were developed externally. If I were in Disney's shoes, I might have made much the same call, alas. Either that or take a gamble on a radical re-vitalization campaign, which is dicey in today's game market.

Macsenour• 13 years ago

I understand your feelings. But keep in mind that the PEOPLE who made those games are LONG GONE. The NAME of the company is still there, and I understand why you're attached to it as I am too, but the people who made those special games have been gone for years.

As hard as it is, don't attach those great memories to the COMPANY, but rather the people who had the vision to make them.

If you need to remove your attachment, play the Kinect version of Star Wars.

And for one person there: Karma. It takes a long time but it does come back to bite you. Now you know the price of those 6am flights you booked.

mhd• 13 years ago

I was looking forward to StarWars 1313. Showing the seedier side of the universe would've been a welcome change to the "All Jedi, all the time" stance of, well, everything SW-related since the prequels came out.

prawks• 13 years ago

Same, I cannot believe they're cutting this. That game looked fantastic.

Lewisham5• 13 years ago

To be fair, so did Force Unleashed, but that was not a great game.

junkilo• 13 years ago

zacharycohn• 13 years ago

On one hand, I'm sad that the studio that created Full Throttle, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight, and many other games from my childhood is gone.

On the other hand, they haven't made a great game in a very long time. Even The Force Unleashed was just okay, but not stellar.

eropple4• 13 years ago

That studio disappeared a long time ago, though. In the mid-00's it transitioned to a licensing group and only fairly recently started making games on its own again.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

Agreed on both counts.

I purchased TFU 2 at full retail ($60), and regret it. It is hands down the worst title I own.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

Yeah, I for one am not weeping that hard.

MicroProse was stagnant for a long time and then finally went under - the resulting sale gave us, finally after so many years, a great X-Com game (with another on the way).

The death of a game studio can have a (pretty thick) silver lining. When THQ went down it auctioned off its franchises - and forced a changing of the guard for some franchises that have been stagnant.

bmeckel• 13 years ago

True enough, but I was REALLY looking forward to SW 1313, it looked magnificent. That's what I'm really upset about here.

throwaway19792• 13 years ago

Claimed another victim, has the mobile-gaming wars. </yoda-speak>

In all seriousness ... I am very saddened by this news. I few up playing Monkey Island, Indy Jones, etc. I was thinking of buying all the Monkey Island games again on my iPad but didn't have the time.

evan_3• 13 years ago

Which doesn't even make sense, I would buy an iPad port of Full Throttle so fast.

ry0ohki2• 13 years ago

Except that it has to be priced at $.99-$1.99 for most people to do so...

GFischer5• 13 years ago

I don't understand why they aren't updating and selling all their properties on iOS and Android.

There's an entire new generation that could buy them, plus point-and-click adventure games sound like a great use case for tablets.

jordan0day• 13 years ago

Yeah, tablets seem like they'd be a great fit for SCUMM-style games.

stonewhite• 13 years ago

Fate of Atlantis, King's Quest 3, Monkey Island 2 and even Full Throttle is available: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone

quaunaut• 13 years ago

The week after GDC. 'Cause y'know, who might want to go looking for a job at the biggest game developer convention in the world?

Zikes2• 13 years ago

It's my understanding that the writing has been on the wall for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the employees secured new jobs before this was announced.

airfoil• 13 years ago

This is correct. Once the Disney deal was announced, LucasArts folks had a feeling there wasn't much time left. I know a few people who left LucasArts for exactly the reason you describe.

Zikes2• 13 years ago

Yep: http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/10/4209766/lucasarts-employees...

swang• 13 years ago

Great. This means we'll never seen a Day of the Tentacle remake/sequel :(

pekk• 13 years ago

No, it just means that Disney will have to do it or license out the IP... unless it was something that was not commercially feasible, but that would have been true even with LucasArts

6thSigma2• 13 years ago

DOTT is quite possibly my favorite video game of all time. I really hope Tim Schaefer gets this IP.

DoggettCK• 13 years ago

This, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle.

darkchasma• 13 years ago

This is great news. LucasArts hasn't done anything with the brand that I've actually liked. I want to see more BioWare style licensing deals, and can only hope for a KOTR3

enjo2• 13 years ago

I remain absolutely flummoxed that we've never gotten another KOTOR. It's really the most baffling decision...ever.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

> 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...

In other words: by closing the studio we can just collect checks from licensing our IPs which gets turned into bonuses for our executives while we don't have to pay any developers, artists, designers or other filthy wage slaves.

macspoofing2• 13 years ago

That's harsh and unfair.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

Really? I think it's translating it to plain english and it's a lot nicer than what's actually going through my head about the people making that decision.

rje• 13 years ago

It's certainly harsh, but which part is unfair?

obviouslygreen• 13 years ago

While this is true, it is still making work for said wage slave proletariat... and eventually it'll likely be the same people getting that money now, assuming they stay in the same industry.

I'm not saying it's a great thing, and I agree that it's likely motivated at least in part by a reduction in cost to justify some lovely top-level bonuses, but the work isn't disappearing. It's just being sent elsewhere.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

Let's say that everyone who got laid off today at LucasArts forms a new studio and somehow lands the contract to make the next Star Wars games.

I guarantee you that their pay will be much lower from that contract, and their new independent studio will probably not get a favorable (if any) portion of the back end on sales. That means that not only will they get paid less to make the game, but even if it is successful, the result of their hard work will not result in much improvement to their situation and indeed they will then have to land a contract to make the next game.

My point is this a move that favors only the executives and fucks over the folks who do the real work. And in reality rather than hypotheticals, they are all out of work today and must find new jobs, a shitty position for anyone to be in and my heart is with all of them.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

"Golly this goose is delicious. Pity the thing refused to lay golden eggs faster..."

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

If Project Eternity and the South Park RPG go well, does that mean that Obsidian might get a chance at KOTOR III?

MrMember• 13 years ago

That Star Wars license won't come cheap. Would the $4 million they raised on Kickstarter for Eternity even cover the licensing fees?

crapshoot101• 13 years ago

Be still my beating heart! But no, I doubt it - I'd love for a single player RPG, but expect nothing but MMO's here on out.

shawnbaden• 13 years ago

I think Telltale Games is the current version of the old LucasArts we all feel nostalgic for.

GFischer5• 13 years ago

I'm really hoping for some Telltale Games for Android.

I really don't have the time for PC games, but I sometimes have long (4+ hour) bus trips, and an Android adventure game would be amazing.

I'd also like an old X-com remake for android, and some other tower defense games besides Plants vs Zombies (or PvZ 2 :) ). PvZ was the first Android game I've bought.

yareally2• 13 years ago

Not an Android solution, but a Surface Pro could probably play them okay if you don't want a full out computer or laptop.

grimborg• 13 years ago

Replay Games is doing some work there as well. Have you tried Fester Mudd?

janesvilleseo• 13 years ago

The question is, who is going to be picking up the rights to produce the next Star Wars Games?

dribnet• 13 years ago

Or Ballblazer?

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Perhaps the more interesting question is, who is going to be picking up all this creative talent looking for paychecks?

benwerd• 13 years ago

The Secret of Monkey Island is my favorite game of all time and their games in totality were a formative experience when I was growing up - I'm really sad to see them go. Booo.

On the other hand, hey, Disney owns Monkey Island. I'd love them to do something with it.

valgaze• 13 years ago

Some diehards think Disney already did something with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8dpLebI-4s

DerekL2• 13 years ago

Someone claims that the writer of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' had previously worked on a script for a Monkey Island movie.

http://www.worldofmi.com/comments.php?type=news&id=1259&...

jl6• 13 years ago

I think they already did, and it's called Pirates of the Caribbean. The MI games draw heavily from that theme (which predates them, in the form of the ride). There may not be room in the market for another variation.

GFischer5• 13 years ago

On another thread, they linked to Ron Gilbert saying that Disney probably would kill it in favor of their own Pirates of the Caribbean property, though Googling for it shows that he will contact Disney and at least try :) .

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/13/ron-gilbert-plans-to-conta...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/30/ron-gilbert-disney-monkey-...

enjo2• 13 years ago

Man I had forgotten about the LucasArts games of my youth...more accurately I had forgotten they were made by Lucas Arts. Now I'm actually a bit sad.

lucisferre• 13 years ago

I'm assuming you played the Telltale Games Monkey Island already? It was actually a refreshing return to that style of gaming. I enjoyed it personally.

octo_t• 13 years ago

Here's how fucked the games business is: Tomb Raider sold 3.5 million units in 4 weeks, and yet failed to meet sales expectations. Hitman sold the same, and Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million and they both failed to meet expectations. Square Enix lost over $150m last year, despite those three critically and commercially (by any reasonable metric) games coming out. Despite selling millions of copies they aren't profitable because game budgets are too high.

EA thinks that next gen budgets will be "only"10% higher than this gen. That means that gmaes need to sell at least 10% more units than current games are doing, and eren that will only guarantee the losses of tens of millions we're seeing now. To be profitable they'll need to sell far far more. On consoles that, because they are new, will have a limited user base anyway. Either that or raise the price to make up the shortfall. In the middle of the longest recession in a century.

The industry is fucked

The only way to make money from games is what Disney have done, license the IP to other companies and get them to pay for it.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

The AAA side of the industry is fucked up much like the big money side of movies and other stuff is often fucked up; because it not only has to pay all the creative folks but it has to pay for a slew of empty suits and massive, massive marketing campaigns.

I think that's why we're seeing such a rise of indie developers. People credit Kickstarter but I think Kickstarter's popularity and success is a result of the move to indie development rather than a cause of it (or maybe a little of both.)

There will always be talented people who want to make games and they will find a way to do it. Look at the old days that Commander Keen, Wolf3D, DOOM and many other shareware games came from. A bunch of independent BBSes where the shareware games where passed around and talked about purely through word of mouth. Rampant piracy, far worse than today, and yet those games made money for their creators.

You may be right, the EAs, the Activisions and other bloated monstrosities may be fucked. And to them I say good riddance. I love, love, love Bioshock Infinite, but if the $100 million dollar budget games are a dinosaur on its way out, I won't mourn it too much.

AJ007• 13 years ago

Add to it the impact mobile has had on consumers who are increasingly used to getting games for somewhere between free and 99 cents.

There is a mad rush to free to play right now in order to capture that audience. Although the market is much bigger, I fully expect the attempt to squeeze as much money possible out of the players will results in more and more painfully annoying games (most free to play already fit in that category.)

justinhj• 13 years ago

Been a video game programmer since 93 and I totally agree with your comparison with the movie industry. If you're going to make a AAA game you need a huge budget both for development and for marketing, which means that only the 'sure thing' will get the green light. That means the same games over and over with greater graphical fidelity, just like the big budget action movies don't stray too far from the accepted formula.

just2n7• 13 years ago

This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc.

These markets were literally flooded with massive volume in games. You went to the store and could literally not decide what you wanted to play, because there were 30+ games you had never seen, you wanted to play them all, and another 30+ for a console you didn't own. And then a few months later, there were 20+ new ones.

All of these games were relatively simple, creative, outside the box, not hyped nor mentioned in any advertising anywhere. And almost all of them kicked ass. Because they were still analog cartridge-ey and/or required a CD to play, you didn't want to own hundreds of games (even though you could because most were priced very reasonably), so it was amazing when things like Sega Channel came out. That was one of the truly awesome things I remember as a kid, even though it was short lived.

I miss those days. Now it's AAA title that took 3+ years to make that looks good but has almost nothing to it. Back then, a $5 game that took a company 1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer, and about 2 weeks to make had significantly more playability to it. What happened to the industry?

talmand7• 13 years ago

Your movie industry comparison is probably spot on in many ways. Especially the part about the number of non-developers at a company that actually increase the cost of development even though they are not directly involved.

The other aspect I'm curious over is if these AAA titles don't meet their sales quota is an attempt by publishers to get out paying royalties and bonuses to developers. It's a common tactic in Hollywood and there's evidence of it in the gaming industry already.

BHSPitMonkey• 13 years ago

"and yet those games made money for their creators."

Did they make enough money to offset what would be fair salaries for their creators throughout the time they were being made? If not, then the comparison isn't very valid since the creators would have been working for free.

ohashi• 13 years ago

What about Blizzard? They seem to be the exception to the rule. They deliver very few titles but they seem to be raking in cash on each of them.

AlexandrB• 13 years ago

One of my absolute favourite games bootstrapped themselves on the basis of pre-orders before Kickstarter was available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_2

I think they pulled it off because of the strong reputation of the original Natural Selection (which was a Half Life mod). Still pretty amazing, especially considering they developed the 3D engine from scratch.

ijk4• 13 years ago

This year at the Game Developer Conference, Chris Hecker had an entirely wordless rant about the state of creativity in the AAA space, essentially using AAA's PR to point out how little real innovation is happening in that space. [1] It's received quite a bit of attention and agreement in the industry.

[1] http://chrishecker.com/Fair_Use

vacri• 13 years ago

Kickstarter hasn't done a lot of delivery yet. It's captured people's imaginations, but due to the relative lack of tangible output at this stage, the warts are yet to be seen.

intended2• 13 years ago

While synergistic, Kickstarter is definitely on the right side of the indie dev movement.

If there were no kickstarter, there would still be an increasing amount of indie devs. Of course their life would be much harder, and we would not be seeing the new Torment game.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

Worth adding to the story that the CEO of Square Enix also resigned over the sales figures.

ijk4• 13 years ago

And the CEO of Electronic Arts.

Lewisham5• 13 years ago

Tomb Raider sold 3.5 million units in 4 weeks, and yet failed to meet sales expectations.

This is because Square Enix is using Eidos to prop up its Japanese arm, which has been floundering wildly. They then shift all the hopes onto the Eidos studios to keep the shareholders happy. Tomb Raider did gangbusters by all metrics apart from what Square Enix needed it to do to keep investors happy.

caycep• 13 years ago

does that mean potential spinoff in future?

rhizome• 13 years ago

Where are the "expectations" coming from? Could it be that only they are out of line, with the rest of the industry held captive to whatever figures emerge from the woodwork?

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

Square-Enix is an absolute shitshow that should be a lesson against having a guy who doesn't understand games at all as CEO. I think their fate was sealed when Wada fired a huge fraction of their experienced workforce resulting in a talent deficit which in turn lead to poor quality games (FFXIV...) which then snowballed into a lack of trust for Wada and the company as a whole.

At this point all they do is make remakes of 20 year old games.

edit: that being said if they come out with FFVI for Android I'll probably buy it X_X

nolok• 13 years ago

The industry is fine, trying to make 30/40/50 Millions AAA games by the truckload is a doomed strategy, but that's not a surprise. Lots of developer are doing a whole lot of money.

I cannot find brad wardell's blog from his galactic civlizations 2 dev time (from Stardock), he had a really good quote which perfectly applies; I don't remember it word for word but what he was saying is: it is stupid to make a really expensive game and then hoping to get your money back on it just because another game did, you have to find your market and make a game targeting it. If you sell 3.5 million units and you consider that a loss, then you fucked up, it's not a market problem.

There is a reason why indie games are exploding, and it's not a lack of liquidity, editors are pouring money into franchises trying to get the next call of duty, and it's not working the same way every action/sci-fi movie cannot have a James Cameron budget and get its money back.

rdtsc2• 13 years ago

Does this open the space for indie developers? HumbleBundles have been doing ok lately. What if they had slightly more budget, can they do fairly close to these games.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

Humblebundles seem to be mainly made up of games that have already been a commercial success to some degree.

By the time games hit the humble bundles they have often already been available for $1 on Steam. If I was an indie game dev I would use the bundles to get my old game into as many hands as possible to build a customer base for the next game.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

Is the industry fucked or is it just the case that it is a winner take-all situation? I assume that the big games like COD , Halo etc are still making plenty of cash. Maybe rather than seeking a profit on each game you just try to keep the lights on with the bonus of a lottery ticket that the game might make it huge.

For every big AAA developer going bust there are probably 100 indie devs who fail to gain traction and just slide into obscurity.

steveklabnik• 13 years ago

> Is the industry fucked or is it just the case that it is a winner take-all situation?

You say that like 'winner-take-all' isn't fucked.

mkeung• 13 years ago

"The only way to make money from games is what Disney have done, license the IP to other companies and get them to pay for it."

Not completely true, Disney has their own dev team and they licensed Temple Run to make their own versions. Still though, it's not a risky bet as it's licensing something successful already.

Edit: also not in the AAA part of the industry

teej• 13 years ago

> The only way to make money from games is what Disney have done, license the IP to other companies and get them to pay for it.

I think it's worth noting that Disney Interactive has posted a loss every single year of it's 18 years in existence.

chii• 13 years ago

i wonder if those numbers they post as loss are actually real loss or creative accounting loss. 18 years is a long time to keep losing money...

talmand7• 13 years ago

You're only speaking of the big boys of the industry that have been on this downward trend for years. The smaller guys that are getting more creative in how to approach their market and how they develop their games are most likely doing just fine.

cptxester2• 13 years ago

If you think that's the only way to make money from games then you must not have heard of this thing called Minecraft.

dsugarman• 13 years ago

I don't think the AAA industry has to be fucked. I think if you cut out the publishers and all content is downloadable, you can provide higher margins the to studios who actually create the content. Right now the distributors(publishers) are the ones who come out like bandits..

ttrreeww• 13 years ago

The Fed chairman should open the liquidity window so the game company can trade securitized expected game sales notes to the Fed/taxpayer for hard cold cash!

otikik• 13 years ago

Minecraft.

I win.

cptxester2• 13 years ago

Nope, you lose. I mentioned it here first. Sorry!

elorant• 13 years ago

The industry is fucked because they charge $40 for a game that lasts on average less than 30 hours. This is a rip-off. Even RPG games don't last long these days. With an economy on the ropes you have to wonder in what kind of parallel universe are those guys living?

Give me a game at $10-$15 and I'd definitely buy it. Otherwise, well there are other ways to get them.

Not to mention that they went on and destroyed entire genres, like the much loved adventure games. Now we have a bunch of blockbuster FPS games that have started to look the same.

As an ex hardcore gamer I miss the thrill of the 90s when games were original and funny. Now it's all point and shoot some villain. After a while it becomes boring.

eropple4• 13 years ago

> With an economy on the ropes you have to wonder in what kind of parallel universe are those guys living?

One where length-of-play matters to a minority of gamers. I'll give you a hint, though: it's not a parallel one.

> Give me a game at $10-$15 and I'd definitely buy it. Otherwise, well there are other ways to get them.

"Give me a game for under a buck an hour, or fuck you, I'll just take it."

Fortunately, you are something of an outlier.

jussij• 13 years ago

Just curious, what other form of entertainment can you get for $1.50 per hour?

bane• 13 years ago

Even worse, I find very few modern games that I even want to play. As a result I spend more time playing emulators, old retroconsoles and old computer games than anything new. For the price of a new game you can probably grab an entire SNES and a few hundred hours of really good games.

Notice how many of these relatively cheap indy games are setup to recreate this gaming experience.

This back catalog (including recent additions) has got to be taking a chunk out of the sales numbers.

lawnchair_larry• 13 years ago

I think Notch personally pocketed about as much as Square Enix lost in the same period, so the math must be in there somewhere.

jaimebuelta• 13 years ago

So called AAA games are reaching a point of saturation, probably. They are spending simply too much money for what thy can get back. This is similar to movie studios. There is a limited number of "Dark Knight rises" movies you can do, because you need a HUGE number of viewers to just not loose money. Of course, a good franchise is the best way to secure players (CoD, for example)

But the industry is not just those games. Right now there are tools to make a fantastic game with a rather limited number of people and reasonable budget. I am not only referring to very small indie games, but I think there is a market for middle-of-the-road games in terms of budget. Right now everything feels like either Tomb Raider or Fez. The tools are there to ease the development and create a healthy group of companies generating great games that are not state-of-the-art, but are fun.

There is also the issue that game companies has been traditionally quite chaotic, with crazy plans, insane management and giving any excuse to just crash. I think the industry is learning what are the problematic points, what makes sense in term of a project. Video games industry is still relatively new, and it has been quite shaky. Hopefully they'll get better at all that...

markstahler• 13 years ago

I guess we will have to wait for some Kickstarter project for the next "Tie Fighter" or "X-Wing" game. I don't know if it was because I was a kid but those are games bring back very fond memories.

Lewisham5• 13 years ago

FWIW, this is not the first time LucasArts existed as a licensing arm and not a development house. For much of Jim Ward's tenure in the mid-2000s LucasArts was essentially what Disney is positioning it as now. LucasArts as everyone knew it died a long time ago, the most upsetting thing was that the company that was left had no vision past the Star Wars license, leaving all the other IP to rot.

My hope is that Disney actually has a more holistic view on the LucasArts properties, because it's used to managing many diverse properties in a way LucasFilm was not. Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle etc etc might actually get released out to those who want them. This might be the best thing that has happened to LucasArts and its fans, but of course the job losses are disheartening.

dccoolgai• 13 years ago

I hope you are right.. probably dating myself by saying this, but I remember playing MI when I was younger..it felt like magic. I felt so sucked into that world, I used to just listen to the soundtrack for hours.

kilian• 13 years ago

Fun fact: the original monkey island CD was a music CD with the soundtrack, too. This is possible because music is written to a cd outside-in and date inside-out (or visa versa, I forget). This blew my mind as a kid, and you could even see the physical distinction on the cd between the two data streams as well.

mjn• 13 years ago

One interesting aspect of that episode in LucasArt's history is that it led pretty directly to the founding of Telltale Games (by laid-off LucasArts employees), which has been reasonably successful, and has produced some interesting games. Doesn't mean the same will happen here, but it's intriguing.

JL2010• 13 years ago

Yes, I also would love to see some of their original IP in modern full glory. Full Throttle and Grim Fandango both have a special place in my heart...

chaostheory• 13 years ago

You're right. Judging from the recent releases and the upcoming ones, Lucasarts joins the likes of Bioware.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

Why wasn't it worth finishing the game in their pipeline? If it's mostly developed and they treat sunk costs as sunk costs isn't it basically throwing away money to cancel something that's pretty far along in development?

saraid2163• 13 years ago

I'm... not sure you understand how the sunk cost fallacy works...

If anything, what they did was the rational decision.

lwat• 13 years ago

If it's gonna cost X to finish the game and they expect to make more than X from selling the game, then they should finish it. The amount spent to date is irrelevant.

frncscgmz• 13 years ago

Sad news. Grim Fandango is one of my favorite games of all time. What's gonna happen to the licenses to all those old games? I just hope they're given at least the Steam/GOG treatment and don't become vaporware.

nachteilig• 13 years ago

I guess I'm not surprised, but I am pretty sad.

I spent a lot of time in Lucasarts games as a kid. Fond memories. Thanks, Lucasart.

sho_hn• 13 years ago

This makes me quite hopeful. The way I see it, the folks who made the games I cared about were long gone; with the IP holder focusing on licensing / contracting out, they might get to work on those IPs again after all. I enjoyed Tales of Monkey Island (LucasArts-published but Telltale-developed sequel with some of the original talent on board). The internal studio that had to be kept busy was probably more of a potential impediment to that.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

They should sell to EA, which is worse than death for a studio.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Its sad, although its sad like hearing your great aunt who has been "alive" but effectively a not present due to dementia for the last 3 years finally succumbed to some sort of illness. At one time Lucasarts was an amazing studio with amazing vision, but that time ended a while ago.

I agree with others that the games business is once again facing a crisis of its own creation. In part because "games" are a product with a very difficult to pin down place.

Prior to computers, "Games" were either "Board games" where you bought the box and tokens and a ruleset, or "Card games" where you used an existing platform and implemented your own game by applying specific rules. The former is fairly easy to monetize, the latter not so much. Computer games are kind of like board games without the physical cost of making the tokens. But sometimes they are like card games where the platform is shared and a bunch of people can play at the same time.

The crisis seems to have evolved around dependence on getting $50 - $60 per copy sold. Which got disrupted by both the 'pay per month' market and the mobile/facebook market.

I wonder when folks evaluate the various Kickstarter efforts if they can come up with a new business model for more modestly priced games.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Dunno what the problem is here. Switching to licencing and letting other developers in on the action seems smart to me. Much more potential to do something innovative or just different. Bummer for the employees, but such is life. If they were or are any good, Im sure they will find new work.

As for anticipated dark plot type games, well, its Disney. They aren't going to do that, are they? They do family fluffy stuff.

Oh, old men: stop trying to take a kids franchise and expecting it to be grown up and adult. We get the same BS here in the UK about Dr Who. Same problem, old fans forgetting that is a kids show. Starwars is for kids, and us adults who refuse to grow up. But make no mistake, this is a kids franchise first.

That said, I do think Dr Who lets adults in better than the last 3 SW films did.

mikeocool• 13 years ago

Maybe this means the Grim Fandango IP will be sold off in a fire sale, and Tim Schafer can do a second wildly successful KickStarter to buy it and make Grim Fandango 2!

MartinCron• 13 years ago

I don't need a Grim Fandango 2, though I would really love a Grim Fandango HD for consoles and/or tablets.

smrtinsert• 13 years ago

I really wish the Loom IP was going somewhere besides Disney's vault (pun intended, but unfortunately its not the valuable vault).

That game needed so many sequels. It was fantastic.

pla3rhat3r• 13 years ago

Their Star Wars games and Lego series were pretty good. I loved some of the old titles as well. I'm sad for all those incredible people who are now looking for work. I've been to that office and a lot of really great people poured their very being into that company. I'm sure they'll all land on their feet though.

BurritoAlPastor• 13 years ago

Well, it's about damn time.

There's a lot of "Oh no! Not LucasArts! I loved Monkey Island / Grim Fandango / Zombies Ate My Neighbors / Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures!" talk going around, but that's misguided and a testament to the power of a brand. Unless I've missed my mark, LucasArts has developed in-house a total of two games in the last eight years. (Force Unleashed and Force Unleashed II. I thought they were mediocre.)

This isn't Disney laying off developers so they can just make money off licensing and publishing; this is Disney consolidating a (historically troubled) licensing-and-publishing business into their existing (and very good) licensing-and-publishing infrastructure.

Everyone who made your favorite LucasArts game hasn't worked there in a long time.

talmand7• 13 years ago

I find it interesting how many people in this thread are saddened over the closing of LucasArts speaking of the classic games they loved from their childhoods.

Please keep in mind that the development studio that closed down is not the same thing that made the classics we all cherish. What we know as LucasArts died a long time ago.

I'm more saddened at the thought of developers losing their jobs and I'm hopeful that many of them had opportunities to get out ahead of time.

neya• 13 years ago

Sigh, I still remember Lucas arts from the days of Grim Fandango. This is obviously sad news :'(

eyuelt• 13 years ago

Dangit. I was really looking forward to Mickey and Goofy's epic light saber battle with Kermit and Sith Lady Piggy in "Disney's Magical House of Star Wars: Attack of the Muppets"

datalus• 13 years ago

LucasArts as a developer hasn't made a good game for at least a decade. All of the good Star Wars games were third party like KOTOR by BioWare. So it makes sense to use the LucasArts as a publisher only. Still I am saddened that an iconic developer from my childhood game days has been put to pasture.

kevindication• 13 years ago

I guess this explains why their booth was empty at PyCon this year.

(Though I think they may have had an empty booth at previous PyCons...)

SkittlesNTwix2• 13 years ago

Could someone with experience in the field, please elaborate on how the unit-expectation numbers are calculated? At the risk of sounding obvious, is it possible that the models used to gauge expectations are outdated?

rafaelc• 13 years ago

While it isn't surprising that Disney made a business decision, the suddenness is shocking, at least based on how the article portrays this going down.

Any folks at LucasArts that need help finding a job (and happen to be reading this) just shoot me an email - I'm happy to help and my email is in my profile.

Edit: non-technical too, just figured I can try to help anyone that is impacted by this!

erickhill• 13 years ago

The feeling I had when I first played Dark Forces was very similar to when I first tried Angry Birds: Star Wars. It was something akin to an a-ha moment like, "Wow, this game is SO much better now. The game play actually makes sense in this universe with these characters!"

DF was, at the time, an alternative to single-player Quake and Unreal, etc. and the overall feeling and theme (in my view) was spot on. Plus, it had a /story/ which many 1st-person shooters sorely lacked. Wolfenstein was really the only other one that really kicked ass, and it was ancient at that time. DF wasn't just a shooting simulator. It was ... immersive (which sounds so cliche, but it truly was).

RIP, LucasArts.

codereflection• 13 years ago

While I understand, this still makes me sad.

opyate• 13 years ago

Same here. I had to look twice to see if this wasn't an April 1st post.

reiichiroh• 13 years ago

Anyone remember Acclaim and THQ made their money making licensed (and thoroughly crappy) games for Disney? Before they went and bought original properties/studios? Now both Acclaim and THQ are dead.

tenpoundhammer• 13 years ago

Indie Games are safer; small budget, small sales, still success. AAA games are gambles; huge budgets, great sales, are failures, they must have psychotically high sales numbers. I predict AAA titles will be fewer and fewer. Hopefully our gaming consoles will be augmenting that with smaller titles in the future.

It will be just like the movie business, usually you pay a little to rent decent movies run of the mill movies and watch them at home, and every once in a while you will pay theater prices to see Avatar or Harry Potter or whatever is hyper big budget and popular.

Gaming is still a young industry that needs time to find itself.

hatter10_6• 13 years ago

As many have pointed out, the cost of developing a game has escalated to a level where few companies can afford it. I wonder if the development industry is ripe to move from vertical integration to further specialization.

For example, we could have a standardized 3D environment format, where some companies specialize in creating those. Other companies could specialize in creating characters, others physics engines, story development, or direction.

An added benefit of this is a potential for game worlds to connect to each other (this has always been a dream of mine).

I know the industry is already specialized into development studios and publishers. I wonder if further specialization could spread out the risk, and increase the competitiveness of each party, even more.

avelis• 13 years ago

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Disney-Game-over-at...

Here is the SF Gate article on it. I thought I would share it because it has some pictures of the campus. I have driven and walked by it and will be sad to see it go.

mprinz• 13 years ago

It's a shame. They made such great games back in their golden era. Why didn't they just cut down the team size and tried to develop some kind of Indie games, instead of yet another AAA Star Wars bullshit? They formed game design icons like Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Noah Falstein, Hal Barwood and Brian Moriarty - Bring only one of them back to work on a small scale project and the result would be amazing.

But nah...whose asking me...

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts

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