LucasArts Reduces Staff After Cancellations 55
cordsie writes "In a move that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one at this point, the once venerable LucasArts has laid off thirty of its staff. The brief article implies that the layoffs were due to the recent cancellation of the sequel to Sam and Max and the Full Throttle follow-up." S!: Ferrago has a story noting this reduces the LucasArts staff count "to about 389", still a significant number, and an earlier International House of Mojo story regarding the layoffs has a commenter alleging: "Among the people let go were... [the] Director of The Dig, Escape from Monkey Island and most recently Full Throttle 2... as well as both the Lead Engineer and Producer of the late Sam and Max 2 game."
A New Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:is the star wars curse (Score:3, Insightful)
Why then do the performances suck in the first two episodes? Because the script is bad and the direction is worse. The actors are fighting with blue screen (not MS) sets and Lucas really getting his hands in and asking for wooden dialog. He's choosing cuts with some of the worst performances. Why he does this is a complete mystery. If left to themselves, I am certain that the actors could turn that script into some real magic.
Announcing Generic Star Wars Title #42483.4b (Score:5, Insightful)
And it looks like their innovation and originality dying even more, they recently announced Mercenaries [lucasarts.com] which is a generic 3rd person military unit behind enemy lines preventing North Korea from releasing nukes. Gee, I wonder where they got that *brilliant* plot, who would have ever thought about one involving North Korea and nuclear weapons in this day and age?
Even with their recently released original titles things haven't been going well. I wonder if those who canned Sam & Max 2 were also responsible for giving RTX Red Rock [gametab.com] and Wrath Unleashed [gametab.com] the ok. Plus games like Gladius and Armed and Dangerous probably could have done better if they were given more time. Now it looks like Lucasarts is going to take the safe and easy route by releasing cliches and Star Wars titles.
I can understand the canceling of Full Throttle 2, it was not living up to the original(I recall some game magazines who got to play some of it were disappointed ) and they didn't want to disappoint the fans. But I can't really deal with their canceling of Sam & Max 2 when things seemed to be top quality. Even Steve Purcell thought it was good, and I trust him more then Lucasarts with how Lucasarts has been doing for the last few years.
I think it was about two years ago the company head was going on about how they were going to restore things back to Lucasarts past history of releasing high quality and original titles, and look at how *well* they have accomplished that. While the games were original, they did not have the old Lucasarts quality and game play wise were quite poor. They have pretty much failed at producing high quality original titles, their releasing anymore adventure games seems unlikely, and are pretty much producing just Star Wars games. Thus for now I have given up with Lucasarts, unless they under go through some drastic changes I don't see anything worth my while being released by them.
Not listening to public outcry. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not surprised to see Lucasarts pulling their support from the adventure titles. They see it as a dead genre and want to focus more money and development on guaranteed sellers like Galaxies and Jedi Knight. I only wish they would realize how wrong they are.
Re:Adventure Genre (Score:3, Insightful)
I was pretty surprised to see a shelf dedicated to Adventure games at Best Buy - it used to be half a row. I suspect that means they're selling again. Personally, I'd like to see the "Myst" style game die, which was about 3/4 of those games - I'm definitely not a fan. I like the Lucas Arts/Sierra style much better. Basically, I like character driven stories, not dead worlds/puzzle solving, probably because the puzzles are either too easy or too hard. Too hard usually means completely unintuitive for me - I pick up on clues quickly due to years of experience playing games with bad clues like "Our special of the day is duck, I'll be back in a few minutes to take your order" and the next thing you have to type is to type "duck" or you get machine gunned down (my apologies for not exactly quoting the old Apple ][ adventure that I can't even remember the name of, but it's a good example of a bad clue).
To those recently laid off by lucasart (Score:5, Insightful)
Please try to consider this an opportunity. We are loyal fans who love your games. It is sad to see the ones who made such amazing games as "the dig," "sam and max," and "full throttle," let go like this.
Your art, directing, and style are magnificent. Dont ever forget this.
The reason you were let go was because of shitty, poor management. You should be HAPPY to get away from these people.
Now, A request. Dont stop making games. We love your sense of humor, your writing abilities, and your direction. If you guys release another comedy adventure game WE WILL BUY IT.
In fact, Ive stopped buying lucasarts games recently due to the stagnation your old fuckhead management seems to love so much. So, what I'll do is spend that money on YOUR games instead.
Were waiting!
Re:Adventure Genre (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, Grim Fandango was great, and we have several incarnations of Monkey Island, but there's been nothing like Maniac Mansion 3, or Sam & Max 2 - not even after Day of the Tentacle and S&M sold so well. They rested on their laurels and now the characters have faded into obscurity. No one knows who Bernard Bernoulli, Conroy Bumpus, or Doctor Fred are.
Syberia and the Myst games miss the point. They are worlds to explore, but they aren't funny. The whole point of DOTT and S&M is that they merged genuinely funny/gross humor into an adventure game context, thus producing something that, on the whole, was very entertaining. Light years beyond the "slide show" worlds of Myst and its ilk.
If LucasArts kept at it and maintained their franchises as Warcraft II and Quake started to swoon gamers, we might not have this problem. Alas, they focused entirely on creating inane and slipshod Star Wars titles to make a quick buck. And who are we to criticize them? George Lucas, I'm certain, is laughing all the way to the bank.