Disney Shuts Down LucasArts

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
From Game Informer:

Game Informer has learned that Disney is closing its LucasArts game publishing subsidiary. We received an email from a LucasArts representative confirming the news.


The official statement from Disney (which recently acquired LucasFilm and LucasArts) reads as follows:


"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. As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."


In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company's core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. The BioWare developed MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (which was co-published with EA) won strong reviews but failed to maintain subscribers, and was eventually forced into instituting a free-to-play business model.


LucasArt's other big franchise, Indiana Jones, has failed to make much of a dent in games in recent years, with the exception of Traveller's Tales LEGO Indiana Jones series that, once again, was not developed by LucasArts. Meanwhile, series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which are both heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones films, have thrived.


More recently, LucasArts caused a stir at E3 2012 with an impressive looking demo for a new Star Wars project entitled Star Wars 1313. However, in the months that followed, the project seemed to lose steam, and rumors circulated that the game had ceased production.


The company seemed to have a revolving door of management. In 2004, LucasArts president Jim Ward led a massive restructuring of the company, laying off many development staffers in the process. Ward left in 2008, to be replaced by EA's Darrell Rodriguez, who lasted only two years at the head of the company. Rodriguez's position was ultimately filled by Epic Games' Paul Meegan, who then stepped down in 2012. The company was co-led by Kevin Parker and Gio Corsi until it was acquired by Disney.


During that time, LucasArts attempted to inject new life into its in-house development by bringing in respected industry vet Clint Hocking (who helped lead the Far Cry and Splinter Cell franchises at Ubisoft) in as its new creative director. Sadly, Hocking lasted only two years in the position and left without completing the game he had been working on.


The last game published by LucasArts as a company is the sub-par Kinect Star Wars.


Ironically, many of the games for which LucasArts is best remembered for are not Star Wars games. Its genre-defining '90s adventure games created by Ron Gilbert and DoubleFine's Tim Schafer like The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango are all still celebrated by fans to this day.


Our sympathies go out to those who have lost their jobs today.

Read the article, with hyperlinks to other material, here.

It's certainly disappointing news, and news that suggests they'll mostly be licensing Star Wars for games now. We Indy fans might get lucky. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and the rest? I wouldn't count on it.
 

Forbidden Eye

Well-known member
IMO, this is the first terrible result of the Disney/Lucasfilm merger. Sad for all those out of work.

I'm just hoping we get some good Indiana Jones games down the line as its a guarantee Star Wars will be fine. Monkey Island is probably dead for quite a while.
 

Irfaan

New member
I'm really sad to hear this... I suppose they were kinda dying for a while, and it was never really sustainable doing whatever it is they've doing, but...man.

Yeah, it does seem likely that we'll see an Indy game at least, last time it seemed as if LA was scarred when the Staff of Kings never came out for next-gen (now current gen) consoles (and would never make an attempt at it again!)... hope to see it in the hands of a good developer now, there has been several really interested in using the Indy franchise (I know the Santa Monica dev, makers of God of War were) and maybe even a return to Indy adventure game roots, that'll be cool!

But man, all those adventure games, just hope that Disney are open to people using those licenses or wanting to purchase them (i.e. Telltale or Double fine) they did allow Capcom to use the marvel licence for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 after all!
 
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Irfaan

New member
featofstrength said:
meh...still mad about Staff of Kings...:mad:

I don't think I can forgive them for that or the shameless cash-in that was Force Unleashed II.

But Staff of Kings... man the story looks so epic, love the pic of Indy with the Staff separating the seas.

I still remember how absolutely torturous it was to play the PSP version (the only one I played) and how I literally finished it to see how the story would progress, which was extremely butchered and minimal. I traded that game, even though I collect Indy stuff it did not deserve to be part of the collection or considered as such.

And then when all hope fell out of the game, there was always the book... until they screwed us with publishing that as well.

Still very bitter about all of that. Emperors Tomb is a fantastic game, as well as the others, and though LEGO Indy was fun (love the achievements of those games!) I just wanted a proper virtual Indy experience.

...deep breaths *sigh*

...right, at least the future's looking brighter than it was for Indy, lets face it, I don't think LucasArts had what it takes (since the last 5 years or so) to have just suddenly jumped in after so long and built an Indy game that would have caught up with competitors and have done the franchise justice.

Though there vision has always been kinda constrained with Indy games (excluding LEGO Indy I suppose) but I'm more interested to see how other developers would approach the franchise. I reckon Indy would work with many different type of game genres, as Fate of Atlantis has proved.

Let the outsourcing...begin!
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
So, they're shutting down LucasArts internal game development. Big deal. Most of the good titles developed under the brand have been outsourced for the past decade anyway. And if I read the article right, that practice doesn't stop.

Emperor's Tomb - outsourced, developed by the Collective.
Knights of the Old Republic - outsourced, developed by BioWare.
Jedi Knight sequels - outsourced, developed by Raven Software.
LEGO Games - outsourced, developed by Traveller's Tales.
Monkey Island Episodes - outsourced, developed by Telltale.
Mercenaries - outsourced, developed by Pandemic Studios.
etc...

Staff of Kings, while not a great game, was also outsourced, at least the version that finally came out. Interestingly, the version of the game that was axed (the one that was supposed to utilize Euphoria physics and had that cool trailer), aimed for the current-gen consoles - internally developed.

So, meh. The only somewhat decent ones the studio developed internally within the past few years was The Force Unleashed franchise, and even that was nothing special, to be honest.

Good riddance.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Have to agree with Finn on this one. Star Wars fans really have nothing to complain about, as LEC becoming nothing more than a licensing house (which, frankly, is a destiny it's been heavily flirting with over the last decade) basically guarantees better Star Wars games in general.

For those of us who are fans of the company's long neglected original properties, the threat is that Disney will now just sit on them, which is a difference in status of exactly zero.

The time to mourn LucasArts was long ago.
 

Lambonius

New member
Yeah, seriously--there is nothing to mourn. In fact, fans of Star Wars, Indy, or ANY Lucasarts IP should be celebrating. This is by far the best chance we've had in years to get some GOOD new games in these franchises.

Disney is no slouch, they know how to make money--I guarantee you we will see new Indy games from this, and probably at a lot better quality than the abysmal Staff of Kings. It might take a few developers approaching Disney about licensing rights for Disney to start doing stuff with the old adventure game IPs, but it will happen. Mark my words.

I couldn't be happier about this.
 

Indy's brother

New member
I'm really enjoying the response to this here. Pretty much summing up my opinions, but better articulated in the above posts than I could probably muster. Fan communities are so rife with *****ing and in-fighting when it comes to change, that this is a welcome stance on the subject, and makes me a bit proud to be a member here at The Raven. Of course, you've ruined me for the next insane argument I read on these boards. But it's the good kind of ruining.

:hat:
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I would definitely be going too far if I said that I'm happy about the situation. I am in fact quite cynical about the future of LEC's original properties. However, I was at least as cynical about them before the buyout. It's a lateral move at worst. We can at least hope that some worthy companies will get to work with these licenses now. The people who are reacting along the lines of, "Oh no, now that Disney has bought LucasArts out, the Star Wars game franchise will lose its integrity!" have simply not been paying attention for the last decade or so.

It's a pretty safe bet that some good Star Wars and Indiana Jones games will come out of this at least. I'm really only interested in the second of those two franchises, but I know I'm a minority there. Consider the chances of Disney selling off the adventure game IP are right around zero, I'm crossing my fingers for some re-releases on that front.
 
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Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Lambonius said:
Disney is no slouch, they know how to make money--I guarantee you we will see new Indy games from this, and probably at a lot better quality than the abysmal Staff of Kings. It might take a few developers approaching Disney about licensing rights for Disney to start doing stuff with the old adventure game IPs, but it will happen. Mark my words.
Even if I'm on the cautionary side, like Udvarnoky, I suppose there is more room for optimism than pessimism here.

In a favorable scenario, we do get some good games out of this (and I don't really care if it's a Star Wars game, Indy game or something else, as long as it's a good game).

Worst case, it's a zero-sum game. We'll be getting nothing, but it's the same nothingness we've been getting since, hmm, let's say... Republic Commando.
 

indytim

Member
Irfaan said:
I still remember how absolutely torturous it was to play the PSP version

You should have tried the Wii version of 'Staff of Kings'! I've been playing video games since the late 70s and would rank that as one of the worst games I've ever played. It definitely wasn't finished as I found bugs galore (the digital kind, not the crawling kind) and the controls literally had me screaming at the TV in frustration :mad: A terrible Indy experience which I would have happily avoided (n)

What is most vexing is when you look at the outstanding quality of the recent Tomb Raider and Uncharted games (which so obviously only exist because of the Indy franchise). How has no-one ever produced an Indy action game of their calibre?! :confused: I supposed that question is like asking how can you not make a great game based on James Cameron's Aliens? The recent release would suggest quite easily with disastrous results.

Hopefully Disney will now team up with a first-rate games studio to produce the Indy game we've always wanted.
 

Exulted Unicron

New member
I recently posted in my blog about this. I think it's sad that LucasArts as we know it has gone the way of the dodo, but when you stop and think, it's changed to the point where they didn't care about the quality of games, just the amount. I;d have rather LucasArts take the time to make a quality title like Fate of Atlantis, than churn out disappointing star wars game after star wars game.

I understand they weren't producing games in house as often anymore and they were largely a publishing warehouse, but they were still around. Now the news that all current projects are canned to make way for Episode 7 and thus, causing lay offs in both LucasArts and ILM makes me sick. Once they've got ep 7 out the way, all games will either be done by Disney themselves or external third party developers
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
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.
 

Indy Brazil

New member
The Secret of Lucas Arts - The Crossover Adventure

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FtHMkPmmeLA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

"What would happen if there was a game, an adventure game, where all of our favorite heroes from the past got together to undo the wrong that has fallen upon their worlds? Join your favorite classic protagonists in this Lucas Art's Crossover Tribute ™ and participate on some butt kicking!"
 

Grizzlor

Well-known member
Electronic Arts has been sold the license for console/PC Star Wars games. No mention though of Indy games.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Grizzlor said:
Electronic Arts has been sold the license for console/PC Star Wars games. No mention though of Indy games.
EA has the production values to make very polished games. Their ability to be truly creative is bit of a question mark, however. We'll likely see something that's playable all right, but nothing that will spark a new renaissance.

If they were to make an Indy game, I'd say the chances were that we'd see our beloved man in the hat in a game that would hardly be remembered years from now, but still be better than anything over the past decade or so.
 
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