LucasArts Employees Hold Wake & Eulogy; Vader Still Roams 170
Dawn Kawamoto writes "LucasArts employees held a wake Friday night, days after Darth Vader Disney slayed their studio. Taking the high road, two LucasArts employees put together a eulogy that offers a retrospective on the culture, memories and accomplishments of the team. Most of us who've witnessed a blood bath at the workplace aren't as charitable. Darth Vader Disney is expected to strike again in the next two weeks at its studio and consumer product divisions."
Re:Disney says... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Darth Vader Disney (Score:4, Informative)
LEGO Indiana Jones
LEGO Indiana Jones 2
LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Star Wars: Battlefront
Star Wars: Battlefront II
Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Tales of Monkey Island
All great LucasArts games released within the past 10 years.
Actually.... (Score:2, Informative)
With the exception of Tales of Monkey Island (Which I'm less sure about) all of the rest of those were sublicensees, which will remain. It was the LucasArts game development arm that was axed, not the licensing department. As someone else mentioned only the Force Unleashed games and a few other odds and ends came out of them in the past decade.
One thing I was curious about however, was if any game assets for other licensees came out of LA during that time, given that Star Wars Galaxies, TOR, and a few others were producing during that period, and might (or might not) have had assets produced by the LA art staff.
Re:Live by the tax, die by the tax (Score:5, Informative)
Lucas sold out in 2012 because Disney gave him a butt load of cash. Don't kid yourself.
Re:The Dice Angle (Score:5, Informative)
Bottom line: if you see Kawamoto's name listed as the submitter, you know it's a Dice ad right away.
Dice: You bought slashdot. Fine. But if you're going to try to pass your content off as news, instead of sponsored content, people will leave and you will have wasted your money. If you want to post an ad, call it what it is. Deception will get you nowhere on this site. You said you weren't going to interfere with Slashdot's editorial independence. Honor your commitment.
Re: Darth Vader Disney (Score:5, Informative)
LEGO Indiana Jones - Traveller's Tales
LEGO Indiana Jones 2 - Traveller's Tales
LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy - Traveller's Tales
Star Wars: Battlefront - Pandemic Studios
Star Wars: Battlefront II - Pandemic Studios
Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy - Raven Software
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - BioWare
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - Obsidian Entertainment
Star Wars: Republic Commando - Lucas Arts
Tales of Monkey Island - Telltale Games
FTFY
All the games by Lucas Arts in the last 10 years:
2009: Lucidity
2003: RTX Red Rock
2005: Star Wars: Republic Commando
2008: part of "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed", amongst many other games studios, same with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II in 2010
Re:I used to work at Disney World (Score:4, Informative)
Holy crap, how do people manage to miss my point? I wasn't complaining that they expected employees to follow specific rules, I was pointing out the tone of the "training" which was extremely disrespectful, and the fact that it took less than 10 minutes on day one to be treated like crap by the management.
Re:The Dice Angle (Score:3, Informative)
It's called full disclosure. If a reporter or columnist at The New York Times or The Washington Post owns stock in a company they mention
That is not what is happening here. Does Dice have controlling interest in Disney? This is not a conflict of interest between a source and a subject. There is a huge difference between linking and article about a parent company and an article by a parent company.
if Slashdot is going to promote its parent company's content as news, the connection should be noted in the summary.
It is news content; The fact that a writer is from a parent company is irrelevant.
Also, this is Kawamoto's second accepted submission. Her first was two days ago
Which was also an employment related article. Wow that's strange for an employment related writer. It must be a plot. /sarcasm
The Reuters story had all the key facts that the Dice story did, but Dice owns Slashdot so its two stories went on top. See the pattern yet?
The writer puts her articles first; it must be a plot. /sarcasm
If you want to see plots everywhere go right ahead.
Re:LucasArts died many years ago. (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, what other studio has been consistently been in the top 5-10 demands for a sequel and not even considered it (I'm talking about X-Wing/Tie Fighter here)? They didn't even consider it when Episode 1-3 came out. I mean, really? The Star Wars Universe just had a several billion reboot and you didn't take advantage by making a game which you can pilot the most bad-ass, and cool things which exist from it? Seriously? Yeah, the management had no clue, and as a result, it has been dead for a long time.
There once was a great game studio called LucasArts, who made some of the most innovative and cutting edge video games, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Manic Mansion, Metal Warriors, Monkey Island, Zombies Ate My Neighbors.... It turned into a Zombie about 15 years ago....
Re: Live by the tax, die by the tax (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, no. First, Lucas is old. Second, none of his three kids had any interest in running the company in his absence. Say George dies, it probably goes into a trust and is disassembled. No more ILM. No more Skysound.
In hindsight, it looks like Disney is gutting the company for IP. As a soon to be former employee (more than just Arts got cut this past week, more about the bloodbath will probably come out over the next couple weeks) we have nothing but respect for George for giving us the opportunities that we had. Selling to Disney (or someone else) seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It sucks worse than you know to take a job at a company specifically because it's 40 years old and 'rock solid', then to be unceremoniously shown the door like that. It's downright traumatic.
P.S. 1313 was not several years away from being done, it was much closer than that. Like holiday 2013 close, by my estimation.