How LucasArts Fell Apart

An anonymous reader sends this story from Kotaku's Jason Schreier about the downfall of LucasArts: "Over the last five months, I've talked to a dozen people connected to LucasArts, including ex-employees at the company's highest levels, in an attempt to figure out just how the studio collapsed. Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity. They told me about the failed deals, the drastic shifts in direction, the cancelled projects with codenames like Smuggler and Outpost. They told me the stories behind the fantastic-looking Star Wars 1313 and the multi-tiered plans for a new Battlefront starting with the multiplayer game known as Star Wars: First Assault. All of these people helped paint a single picture: Even before Disney purchased LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, in November of 2012, the studio faced serious issues. LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels."

Re:Off the record vs Anonymity

[evil crash]

Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity

As a non-journalist, what is the difference?

Um, IIRC, off the record means I'll talk to you, but you can't publish what I told you. Anonymity is you can print what I said, but not who said it.

Re:Off the record vs Anonymity

[Lithdren]

It's the difference between "Some sources cite redbull energy drink as a possible cause of the crash" vs "An anonymous source who worked at the plant said "Oh yeah, its clear Redbull and actual bulls are a really bad idea, those steer went crazy and caused the crash."

Re:That's a new twist!

[Dunbal]

It's upper management's job to weed out "laziness and incompetence". Don't blame the workers if you hired incompetent workers. Blame yourself! But of course the trend is cheaper... I want the cheapest. Well, you get the cheapest, someone not qualified or barely qualified for their role. My girlfriend just finished working for a Fortune 500. Her salary was over $100k/yr. The company was trying to hire people for similar positions for much, much less, and surprisingly no one qualified seemed to want the job. Lots of people were interviewed, and they were all rejected. My girlfriend obviously will hold out for a similar salary in her next job. If she doesn't get it from an employer, she can easily get it through consulting. People will pay for the skills, but apparently corporations don't want to keep skilled people on the full time payroll.

Re:always a bit of a disappointment

[alexgieg]

I really don't know how execs get placed who have no knowledge of what their product is, or what makes it good or bad.

I've seen executives saying and believing something along these lines: that their job is to be executives, that what they need to know is how to execute, and that the specifics of the business they're executing (pun intended) doesn't matter since you can replace one business for another and at their level it all boils down to the same thing, so why bother? Sure, some experience in the area is a bonus, but by no means a requirement.

History has shown time and again that's not how reality works, but as the saying goes few things are more difficult than to make someone understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it.

Re:So ....

[firex726]

Also despite the fans and critics loving Empire, George himself considered it the worst of the originals and was not as involved with making it, and resulted in shooting taking much longer than expected. Basically all the good shit about Empire, you can thank Gary Kurtz.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/12/entertainment/la-et-gary-kurtz-20100812 [latimes.com]

Re:So ....

[lgw]

Disney has undoubtedly made some crap over the years - and honestly, Pixar's last few efforts (Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University) haven't been even close to their earlier ones. But they are still making money hand over fist.

Brave was just fine - a new idea, not a sequel, and how often does that happen in Hollywood these days. Plus the theme of "growing up means learning to compromise - yes, even on the things you find important" (with the same in reverse for parents) was nice.