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Disney Shuts Down LucasArts
- kanja 14y agoWere 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 14y agoAnd 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 14y agoDisnye 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 14y 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 14y agoLucasArts, AFAIK, is just the videogame studio division of LucasFilm. I'm sure the merchandise is still making plenty of money.
- illuminate 14y agoLucasArts was the only part of his products that many people care about anymore!
- jechen 14y agoThis 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 14y agoEh. 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.
- Lewisham 14y agoIt's funny/tragic just how much better the Fate of Atlantis' story was than Indiana Jones 4. They could have just made that into a movie and it would have been amazing.
- spangborn 14y agoI 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.
- throwaway1979 14y agoThe space fighter genre seems to be lost. I did some research a few years ago trying to understand what happened. Not enough market demand was the answer. The same goes for Mech games and flight sims. We live in a cold world some days :(
- ArtB 14y agoThere is MechWarrior online in a freemium open beta and another mecha but more FPSy game in development I can't recall right now.
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- mhd 14y agoI 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.
- zacharycohn 14y agoOn 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.
- eropple 14y agoThat 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.
- doktrin 14y agoAgreed on both counts. I purchased TFU 2 at full retail ($60), and regret it. It is hands down the worst title I own.
- potatolicious 14y agoYeah, 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 14y agoTrue enough, but I was REALLY looking forward to SW 1313, it looked magnificent. That's what I'm really upset about here.
- throwaway1979 14y agoClaimed 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_ 14y agoWhich doesn't even make sense, I would buy an iPad port of Full Throttle so fast.
- ry0ohki 14y agoExcept that it has to be priced at $.99-$1.99 for most people to do so...
- GFischer 14y agoAre you sure? From what I read, the big gap is between Free and Non-Free. After that, I think that some marketing could convince the vast majority to pay a lot more than 99 cents (I did, for Plants vs Zombies). I'd pay somewhere around U$ 5 per game myself :)
- ry0ohki 14y agoEven so, that's a huge difference compared to the previous $50-60 people were paying for games. Sure they can cut out the publisher, printing, etc... now, but I expect they were still making at least $10 per game in the past.
- rmc 14y ago$5? Games used to cost $50!! You'd only pay a tenth of what games used to cost.
- GFischer 14y agoAn equivalent game for PC (say a Telltale Games Sam & Max episode) costs U$ 9. The Sims 3 costs U$ 19. You're comparing the adventure games to the massively expensive FPS or RPG or other stuff with awesome graphics and all that :) . And, to be honest, I never paid U$ 50 for any game upfront (PC, console, boardgame, anything), and I believe 99.9% of the gaming population in my country (Uruguay) hasn't either :) . That's the realm of US and European teens that can afford them (well, their parents can). I did buy secondhand console games and other stuff :) , and I've paid far more for my M:TG collection, but on 4 to 10 dollar installments :) .
- quaunaut 14y agoThe week after GDC. 'Cause y'know, who might want to go looking for a job at the biggest game developer convention in the world?
- Zikes 14y agoIt'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 14y agoThis 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.
- Zikes 14y agoYep: http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/10/4209766/lucasarts-employees-suspected-studios-closing-took-gdc-as-an http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/10/4209766/lucasarts-employees...
- swang 14y agoGreat. This means we'll never seen a Day of the Tentacle remake/sequel :(
- pekk 14y agoNo, 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
- 6thSigma 14y agoDOTT is quite possibly my favorite video game of all time. I really hope Tim Schaefer gets this IP.
- DoggettCK 14y agoThis, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle.
- darkchasma 14y agoThis 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
- enjo 14y agoI remain absolutely flummoxed that we've never gotten another KOTOR. It's really the most baffling decision...ever.
- ebbv 14y 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.
- macspoofing 14y agoThat's harsh and unfair.
- ebbv 14y agoReally? 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.
- macspoofing 14y agoDisney closed down the studio, which yes, really sucks for the people who worked there. I empathize for all the guys and gals that lost their jobs from this decision. Having said that, it may have been the right call for Disney. Disney has a number of game studios, and this one may have been redundant. This is what happens when one company buys another and there is overlap in org-structure. LucasFilm animators and operations people already got the axe. I worry for them more than I do for game engineers (their skills are in high-demand).
- rje 14y agoIt's certainly harsh, but which part is unfair?
- obviouslygreen 14y agoWhile 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.
- shawnbaden 14y agoI think Telltale Games is the current version of the old LucasArts we all feel nostalgic for.
- GFischer 14y agoI'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.
- yareally 14y agoNot an Android solution, but a Surface Pro could probably play them okay if you don't want a full out computer or laptop.
- grimborg 14y agoReplay Games is doing some work there as well. Have you tried Fester Mudd?
- janesvilleseo 14y agoThe question is, who is going to be picking up the rights to produce the next Star Wars Games?
- benwerd 14y agoThe 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 14y agoSome diehards think Disney already did something with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8dpLebI-4s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8dpLebI-4s
- DerekL 14y agoSomeone 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&action=read http://www.worldofmi.com/comments.php?type=news&id=1259&...
- jl6 14y agoI 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.
- GFischer 14y agoOn 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-contact-disney-about-monkey-island-rights-at-some-point/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/13/ron-gilbert-plans-to-conta... http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/30/ron-gilbert-disney-monkey-island/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/30/ron-gilbert-disney-monkey-...
- enjo 14y agoMan 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.
- octo_t 14y agoHere'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.
- ebbv 14y agoThe 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 14y agoAdd 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.)
- markstahler 14y agoI 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.
- Lewisham 14y agoFWIW, 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.
- mjn 14y agoOne 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.
- dccoolgai 14y agoI 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 14y agoFun 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.
- jimgumbley 14y agoI believe the data was in the pregap and other than that it was just a normal CD. The physical distinction was probs something else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap
- Glyptodon 14y agoWhy 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?
- saraid216 14y agoI'm... not sure you understand how the sunk cost fallacy works... If anything, what they did was the rational decision.
- lwat 14y agoIf 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.
- saraid216 14y agoThe current history of video game sales expectations has been "expected too much", "expected too much", and "expected too much". I'm willing to bet that they did not expect to make more than X by selling the game.
- frncscgmz 14y agoSad 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 14y agoI 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 14y agoThis 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_ 14y agoThey should sell to EA, which is worse than death for a studio.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoIts 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 14y agoDunno 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 14y agoMaybe 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 14y agoI don't need a Grim Fandango 2, though I would really love a Grim Fandango HD for consoles and/or tablets.
- smrtinsert 14y agoI 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 14y agoTheir 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 14y agoWell, 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.
- talmand 14y agoI 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 14y agoSigh, I still remember Lucas arts from the days of Grim Fandango. This is obviously sad news :'(
- eyuelt 14y agoDangit. 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 14y agoLucasArts 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 14y agoI 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...)
- SkittlesNTwix 14y agoCould 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 14y agoWhile 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 14y agoThe 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 14y agoWhile I understand, this still makes me sad.
- opyate 14y agoSame here. I had to look twice to see if this wasn't an April 1st post.
- reiichiroh 14y agoAnyone 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 14y agoIndie 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 14y agoAs 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 14y agohttp://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Disney-Game-over-at-S-F-s-LucasArts-4407769.php 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 14y agoIt'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...