Disney Shuts Down LucasArts

Finn said:

Found this while taking a stroll around the cyberspace. Have to say, it further underlined the notion that there has really been no need to be miffed about the company's fate in a long, long time.

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I think that article really hits the nail on the head. It definitely made me nostalgic for the company's earlier, creative days, particularly when they were producing adventure classics like Full Throttle and the Monkey Island titles.

But once the focus was exclusively on the Star Wars license, it seemed like much of what was produced was largely forgettable.

Lucas Arts has not been very creative nor accomplished for some time, a lot of their releases were (it seemed within the company) good enough but not great nor ground breaking like earlier releases.

So that's why Lucas got into the video game business (and eventually abandoned plot)...

By mid-1981, more than four billion quarters, or $1 billion, had been grossed from Space Invaders machines, and it would continue to gross an average of $600 million a year through to 1982, by which time it had grossed $2 billion in quarters, with a net profit of $450 million. This made it the best-selling video game and highest-grossing entertainment product of its time, with comparisons made to the then highest-grossing film Star Wars, which had grossed $486 million in movie tickets (costing $2.25 each on average) with a net profit of $175 million.

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How LucasArts fell apart

A solid read, and truly reveals the key reason why the company went the way of the dodo. Simply put, the decisive shots were called by people who knew plenty about making film... but knew next to nothing about making video games.

From the comments section:

AlricPhoenix
I worked at an outsourcing company for a LucasArts game on the DS. It was Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings. Originally it was based off the Crystal Skull movie. Through 6 months on the game, it was clear there was a weird managerial tone going on. Almost any company wants feedback and people to present some creativity in dealing with issues and finding any problems with the games they make. Not them. there was to be ZERO DEVEIATION. Even if we were able to see a bug in the game, IGNORE IT. We were reprimanded when we did. The team became dejected quickly. They tried to submit the game and it failed (obviously). It was at this point the DS game went back into development and was no longer based on the movie and ended up being Staff of Kings because it was too late after the movie came out to be related.

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It was always incredibly baffling that LEC wasn't exploiting Crystal Skull's release. I bet this was only a DS game, though.

Udvarnoky said:

It was always incredibly baffling that LEC wasn't exploiting Crystal Skull's release. I bet this was only a DS game, though.

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Maybe they did try it. Judging by that article though, I guess the initial development dicussion went something like this:

"Go make a game."
"Uhh... sure. What game?"
"A game. Based on the new Indiana Jones movie."
"Oh yeah, sure. We're all pumped about that. So, what kind of game would you like, an AAA title on all the major platforms, some kind of portable game perhaps... social media... um, sir? How big of a team should I reserve from our current staff... and what's the deadline? The movie's coming out on... next May, right?"
"Yes yes. We'll hand you the script and some other details so you can get the story right. Try to get it done by the release."
"Um... release... of the movie? Sir, perhaps we should take another look at that schedule... even if we use existing engine and resources, creating an early playable version alone should take..."
"You trying to give me a headache? You want to talk geek lingo, go find one of the ILM guys in the cafeteria. Now, go make that game."
"Um... all right, sir. Right away. Have a nice day." *Note to self: Remind Mary to send my résumé to BioWare. Ubi too. And Square.*

I'm curious to know if they bothered to redesign the levels or if they just redressed it for a new storyline. Did anyone play the DS game? I'm kind of curious if there's anything about it that screams, "Repurposed Crystal Skull scene" in retrospect.

What I find fascinating the more I read about the fall of Lucasarts is how much talent it retained. For years the management was atrocious, but at the same time, the people in the trenches were doing great work. Technical demonstrations continuously wowed and varied projects got everyone who heard of them excited. Many of these projects all seemed to be canned at 80% complete though, and the ones that did get released were games like Staff of Kings - which at least for me just felt like a cheap port of a very good game that never got finished.

It's amazing the dedication this talent had when they had to know that the odds were against their work ever seeing the light of day, given the company's recent history.

Staff of Kings, at the time it had no title only that it was an Indiana Jones game, was originally planned to be this breakthrough game utilizing Lucas Arts' Euphoria platform. It debuted a smidgeon of the game at the 2007 E3 event where it showed Indiana Jones fighting, supposedly Loa Che's henchmen, on top of streetcars in/around Chinatown/San Fran area 1930's. People were very excited, I was, because the game looked great and it was to be an original adventure. If you guys want you can still see the game advertisement on Youtube, it's unbeleivable !! The preview was a hundred times better than the game. Check it out and let us know what you think about it.

Right, that was just some Euphoria test footage. Then what happened was that the decision was made to shift all resources to The Force Unleashed (which was powered by the same technology), and that, combined with I'm sure some milestone misses, resulted in the Indy project being put out to pasture.

The thirty party "spinoff" versions for the low-end systems (Wii, PS2, DS, PSP) were separate productions that were successfully finished while the internal 360/PS3 SKU kept getting delayed, so they went ahead and released those. I don't know much about how different the original game would have been, but I'm sure it was a more ambition design, though I suspect however much higher-caliber it was, it was still basically gonna be an Uncharted ripoff.

The Wii game by A2M is ultimately okay. Very linear and slight but I like to look at it as a 1990s coin-up arcade game. For some reason I love it a lot more in that light. Plus the Fate of Atlantis unlockable is just a genius bonus feature.