Another LucasArts President steps down

[RetroVortex]

Three things Lucasarts could easily do which would likely be successful and give them a little more credibility:

1. Bring back Battlefront 3
2. Licence another Tales series with Telltale
3. Do NOTHING else. Literally nothing. Anything else they will do they will likely screw up and make everyone hate them even more.

See its easy. (I should be the new president! XD)

[Vainamoinen]

If they even ATTEMPT a new franchise, I'd applaud heartily. However it turns out. As a game maker, LucasArts has reverted to being a baby. And that baby certainly is not housebroken.

Before LA can grow as a game maker again, I would expect they'll have to spread a lot of shit first. But they were lacking even this apart from their recent Mass Effect cloning efforts.

No, honestly, go LucasArts. We might laugh about those efforts for another decade still, but EFFORT is the key phrase here. "Lend out Star Wars license and get 30% off the top" is not a business model that even needs a company name.

[Gibbeynator]

Now's your chance, GOG. Go in there, and get me TIE Fighter!

[Vainamoinen]

TIE Fighter, eh? I say GOG get in there and get me 1313.

[Darth Marsden]

You can have 1213, if that's any good to you.

[Macco]

Sad to see LucasArts go down the drain. Beginning of the end was late 90s, when marketing people said adventure games will not make the maximum short term profit, and LA should concentrate on Star Wars titles. Which led to niche audience, and reduced the innovation (Star Wars will sell because it's Star Wars, no need to innovate and attract people not interested in SW titles). As LA went this path, the main focus was on short term profit. Niche market, no innovation, and the inability to attract new audience led to shrinking profits and the need to fire talented people. The burden of this conduct has been laid on shoulders of every new CEO, and they has faced an impossible task: do everything the way LA is used to in this century, but make LA profitable. Which - short term - has meant firing more people, and shut down projects. If nothing radical will happen, this culture will result of everlasting cuts, and eventual death of LucasArts. Just my 2¢, but this is the how I have perceived the last 15 years of LA.

[Everlast]

Im so tired and upset of Lucas Arts, i enjoyed Star Wars liked the lore and story behind it, but i think people are tired and really thinking that the Star Wars franchise is being worked in the wrong hands. I personally im so tired of Star Wars games and them relegating adventure franchise. Their creative department suck and they are not even creating new titles.

They need to revive their adventure department and keep creating new games outside the Star Wars franchise.

[Gibbeynator]

Originally Posted by Everlast

Im so tired and upset of Lucas Arts, i enjoyed Star Wars liked the lore and story behind it, but i think people are tired and really thinking that the Star Wars franchise is being worked in the wrong hands. I personally im so tired of Star Wars games and them relegating adventure franchise. Their creative department suck and they are not even creating new titles.

They need to revive their adventure department and keep creating new games outside the Star Wars franchise.

That's probably never going to happen. The best we can hope for is that the new guy will strike up a deal with GOG to get some of their game archives back in circulation.

[Jennifer]

I doubt LucasArts will ever be open to releasing their games digitally without any form of DRM.

There's always Steam though. It would be nice to have more classic LucasArts games available than the handful that are there now.

[Syd]

Originally Posted by Jennifer

I doubt LucasArts will ever be open to releasing their games digitally without any form of DRM.

There's always Steam though. It would be nice to have more classic LucasArts games available than the handful that are there now.

When Loom, The Dig, and Indiana Jones popped up on Steam, it looked like they were gearing up to re-release their old adventure catalog (Save for MI1 and MI2, since they'd most likely want to push copies of the SE versions), but then they just... stopped. They could be waiting for 20th anniversaries to try to sell more titles, or perhaps they just decided that they'd rather sit on them some more. It's hard to tell with LucasArts.

[Gibbeynator]

Originally Posted by Syd

When Loom, The Dig, and Indiana Jones popped up on Steam, it looked like they were gearing up to re-release their old adventure catalog (Save for MI1 and MI2, since they'd most likely want to push copies of the SE versions), but then they just... stopped. They could be waiting for 20th anniversaries to try to sell more titles, or perhaps they just decided that they'd rather sit on them some more. It's hard to tell with LucasArts.

I think we can safely blame Paul Meegan for that. It sounds like every new president kills the pet projects of the last president.

[Jennifer]

It's time for LucasArts 3.0. LucasArts 2.0 was created when Jim Ward came in during what was seen as the company's darkest period and restructured everything, cancelled tons of projects, fired a large amount of employees, changed the direction of the company, and spent millions of dollars to try to turn things around.

The thing is, it didn't work. Things are much worse off now than they were in the early 2000's when Jim Ward changed everything. They only publish two games a year, and rarely make any internally developed titles. On top of that, they spend millions of dollars licensing technology for their internal development (Euphoria, Unreal Engine 3), but with so little being done internally there's no way they aren't hemorrhaging money.

Someone needs to come in and assess the situation like Jim Ward did, but come to a different conclusion. The licensing of Star Wars and Indiana Jones comes from Lucasfilm licensing, so LucasArts isn't useful for that. As a publisher, LucasArts isn't too useful either. There's no reason Lucasfilm can't just turn LucasArts into a mere label and publish Star Wars games themselves. If they want to continue being a developer, they really need to look back at worked for the golden age LucasArts/Lucasfilm Games, mainly keeping the film and game division separate entities. Having LucasArts work as a shovelware developer for Lucasfilm just isn't working out for them.

[nickh]

Originally Posted by Shadowknight1

I say get someone in there that remembers the heyday of LA's Star Wars games. Rogue Squadron. Battlefront. Great games dang it.

I'd say their heyday was before Battlefront – they started going downhill in my eyes after the releases of Grim Fandango and X Wing Alliance and while Escape from Monkey Island is derided a bit by fans, I thought it still had some pretty funny bits in it.

A revival is pretty much impossible – at the end of the day they’re a business that needs to make money and Star Wars is a licence to print money. The one hope for classic series like Monkey Island are the likes of Telltale being given the licence, which seems like a no-brainer to me. Why be so precious about holding onto them if you’ve got talented developers ready to use them and earn you a commission? That said, there have been rumours of a new entry to the X Wing series which excites me as they are amongst my favourite games ever, but I’m also pretty confident that it wouldn’t be faithful to the originals in terms of gameplay and would take place in the awful prequel timeline (or at best between III & IV). I’m old-school and think Star Wars was pretty much ruined by the new films and a lot of the extended Universe.

One thought I’ve had though is, surely there’s enough of a market out there for adventure games to make it a worthwhile pursuit for someone, and with todays technology I’d imagine that doing a quality 2D adventure game would be quick and cheap. You see single people do great things using Flash, so imagine what a team of a dozen or so could do? I may not be alone in thinking that The Curse of Monkey Island was the best looking of that series, in many ways even more so than Tales, and that’s got to be 15 years old! I’m hardly an expert in how games are made, but if you had a collection of artists design the backgrounds you’re halfway there aren’t you? No messing about designing 3D models, just a palette drawing straight into the computer...

As well as that, as much as we’d all like to see new sequels to classic games, don’t underestimate how much you may love a whole new project. Grim Fandango was a one off but is considered one of the best Adventure games ever (not necessarily the best example, given it was a commercial flop!). The original Broken Sword is still earning Revolution money by selling it on the app store, so it shows there’s a market for them.

[Chyron8472]

I used to hate the prequels with a passion, and while I still hate the OT SE's (incl. Blurays), I have found a few Star Wars prequel fan edits that actually make them watchable.

Specifically, I most enjoy the prequel fan edits by L8wrtr.



Personally, I think his The Republic Divided fan edit is the best of the three, even though Revenge of the Sith is better than Attack of the Clones.

[Darth Marsden]

I've always liked The Phantom Edit and Attack of the Phantom. Are those especially different to the ones you mention?

[Chyron8472]

I have not watched The Phantom Editor's edits, primarily because he turns the opening crawl into an explanation for the edit. It's a deal breaker for me. The opening crawl is supposed to be a prologue, not author's notes.

[MusicallyInspired]

The Phantom Edits really are better, though. A lot better. Never saw these. I'd like to see Adywan's take if he ever gets time to get around to them.

[raptor]

Originally Posted by Irishmile

I personally am hopeful that they will at least consider another Tales season with TTG..

You and me both, dude. I'd like to see what TTG was up to considering how they ended ToMI.

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I have not watched The Phantom Editor's edits, primarily because he turns the opening crawl into an explanation for the edit. It's a deal breaker for me. The opening crawl is supposed to be a prologue, not author's notes.

That's a shame. The rest of the edit was pretty damn good. Wish you'd give it a go, but I can't exactly force ya.

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

That's a shame. The rest of the edit was pretty damn good. Wish you'd give it a go, but I can't exactly force ya.