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."
Disney says... (Score:5, Funny)
"We have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter it further."
Re:Disney says... (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison of Mouseketeers here.
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the real question is which could shoot better Storm troopers or Mousketeers?
Re:Disney says... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Disney says... (Score:5, Funny)
Which is the broadside of a spherical space station?
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The big one.
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Re:Disney says... (Score:5, Funny)
All of it.
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Probably the Mousketeers. We already know an entire platoon of Stormtroopers can hit the broadside of a Deathstar even if they're standing in it.
I think this is what you didn't intend here.
Mousketeers (Score:3)
Storm troopers can't aim. Ever see star wars? Even the droids don't shoot straight.
Hell, the jedi are so bored they block shots that would actually miss them -- about a third the time. The force must be a magnet for laser blasters because everything other target gets less action.
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Annette certainly had an impressive pair of guns...
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Annette certainly had an impressive pair of guns...
Too bad Uncle Walt wouldn't let her show them off. Even after her contract with Disney was up, Walt talked her out of appearing bikini clad in Beach Party [imdb.com] because in his words she "had an image to uphold".
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Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison of Mouseketeers here.
And Funicello died from the shock
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I looked at the list of games they've published and realized I haven't played a Lucas Arts game in almost twenty years and 59 of the last 79 games they've made have all been Star Wars. *yawn*
I have sympathy for those affected, as far as employment goes, but I don't see the point in keeping a brand alive just to keep pumping out more of a 40 year old franchise and a bunch of ho-hum mobile games because of some 80s/90s nostalgia for the really original stuff they once did.
A warning for Disney (Score:4, Funny)
Make sure you've got some protection for the Epcot Center's thermal exhaust ports.
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In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances!
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Stay away, nothing can resist superheated high velocity bullshit
Login at Live? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who is getting a login page on the last link?
Sierra's Chainsaw Monday (Score:4, Interesting)
LucasArts shutting down is a significant and sad event, but adventure gamers should remember their history. Never forget Sierra Online's Chainsaw Monday.
Re:Sierra's Chainsaw Monday (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened to Sierra is a BIG reason I will NEVER give a single cent of my money to Activision Blizzard (and no I wont pirate their content either, I will play games made by companies that dont pull that kind of crap)
Re:Sierra's Chainsaw Monday (Score:5, Insightful)
It is all a result of those major movie studios never really understanding computer gaming and trying to buy up all those independent gaming studios to create the illusion of growing income within the expanding conglomerate (to inflate executive salaries and bonuses) only to find there is very little value in the old game titles that came with those independent gaming studios. The whole game publisher market with it's access to brick and mortar outlets is also coming under pressure with direct on-line sales in boxed format and digital sales.
Also foreign gaming is now coming in and unlike movie or TV content, if the gaming is good the language translation is fairly cheap and this is creating a new flood of content.
That old model of incompetent nepotism just buying up other companies and pretending that's revenue growth and management skill is falling apart. Why would Disney buy Lucas arts, only to shut it down, git rid of the competition? Those gaming licences just like media content licences have proven to be pretty much shit value because they just add enormous cost to new game development which often destroys the game before it gets out of the door for lack of playability. Cheaper to come up with a new 'theme' and a thin storey and focus on game play, which has proven to be far more profitable.
Underperforming Division gets cut by new owners. (Score:5, Interesting)
We all love lucas arts, but there has not too much coming out of that for a while now, and its a smart decision to trim the fat, no matter how great they once were.
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Speak for yourself. I never liked any of their titles.
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Oh, come on! I understand you might not like Sam&Max or Monkey Island, but you've got to admit Rescue on Fractalus a.k.a. Behind Jaggi Lines for 8-bit Atari was a work of genius! It was the first game that literally made me jump out of my chair when the alien started knocking on the window.
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I see it also like that. There was nothing coming out of Lucasarts except mediocre Star Wars tie ins for decades.
The Lucasarts of the old with great games died a long time ago.
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Yes, but the question is why. If nothing good has come out of there for a while then was it simply because management were doing an EA/Activision and only interested in churning out the same old rehashed boring FPS type games or whatever with no innovation? The point is, did the whole studio need to be axed? or did management just need replacing with people with a little more vision.
Maybe they did the right thing, maybe they did evaluate thoroughly what talent there was left and felt there was indeed nothin
The Dice Angle (Score:5, Interesting)
The first link goes to a "Dice News" story.
The second link goes to a Slashdot "Business Intelligence" story (remember, Business Intelligence is code for "someone paid us to put this up") that is a "Dice News" story by the same author as the first link.
Obviously Dice pushed the Slashdot editors to post this as a news item. So much for editorial independence [techcrunch.com] from the parent company. The disappearance of LucasArts may be Slashdot-worthy news, but when Slashdot's parent company, Dice, is writing the story it looks like they just want lots of techies to think "techies are losing their jobs, it could happen to me, I should look and see what's out there."
Re:The Dice Angle (Score:4, Funny)
I sure showed them!
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A test for editorial independence is "would this article be published if submitted by someone else?". In this case I would say yes and see no problem. Gee they wrote a couple of article expanding on the issue. That is not a bad thing. By the way you ignored the fact that the third link was to a MSN Money article or is Slashdot controlled by them too?
The disappearance of LucasArts may be Slashdot-worthy news, but when Slashdot's parent company, Dice, is writing the story it looks like they just want lots of techies to think "techies are losing their jobs, it could happen to me, I should look and see what's out there."
I would define that as reaching. Do you think it strange that a company that deals in tech jobs would not be one of the first ones to knows about job cuts? Why
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Why can't they pass that information on without people assuming ulterior motives? What is wrong with "We heard something related to our business; you might want to know too".
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, the article will make a point of noting that connection. If The Post runs a story about Kaplan Test Prep, or The Times runs a story about The Boston Globe, they make a point of noting that they are owned by the same parent. Likewise, if Slashdot is going to promote its parent company's content as news, the connection should be noted in the summary. Slashdot used to note
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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 mu
Re: The Dice Angle (Score:3)
I'll reply to you because your sarcasm indicates you might want to ponder the journalism conflicts emerging here.
It's not about Disney this time - it's about overall news slant. Slashdot built a culture for 15 years of users submitting stories which would be sifted (haphazardly, as the running joke goes.) Then they go live, followed by users making comments. However funny the erratic editing was, there was no direct flow of gain to the slashdot ownership structure except when noted.
This time it absolutely
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That's bad news for a news site because yes, they are getting more and more aggressive putting their own spin on the news mix slant.
What spin is there in this news story?
So far you have accused them of conflict of interest and slanting news. I do not see them as doing either. All I see is a factual report of a closure and a eulogy.
but submarine shills for the owner company is yet another new trick
I think where the argument is lost in that the byline of the fist two articles is Dawn Kawamoto and the links have dice.com in them. If they were trying to "submarine shill" something they were pretty bad at it. It is hard to "go incognito as pseudo-user" when one's name is on the submission and the article. H
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It's not about Disney this time - it's about overall news slant. Slashdot built a culture for 15 years of users submitting stories which would be sifted (haphazardly, as the running joke goes.) Then they go live, followed by users making comments. However funny the erratic editing was, there was no direct flow of gain to the slashdot ownership structure except when noted.
The editors would occasionally post their own story. Later, when they became more savvy, they went looking for someone else's submission of the same or a related story more often. It has never been true that all submissions came from the user. What is true however is that formerly there was no trickery in the form of disguising an employee as just a member of the pool of users.
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It's called full disclosure..... Likewise, if Slashdot is going to promote its parent company's content as news, the connection should be noted in the summary.
Full disclosure? Like being able to read that the URL is news.dice.com before you click on it? Magic isn't it.
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Agreed, the issue here is transparency however. Whatever happened to the SourceForge style "link goes to site owned by our corporate overlords" disclaimer? At the very least, acknowledge your potential conflict of interests, Slashdot.
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.
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You make some interesting points.
Not sure about the "people will leave" though.
Every time a summary is inaccurate or a headline is misleading, for instance, there are people stating they're (or will be) leaving.
But do they really?
I think by now frequent visitors are used to what's happening and we go straight to the comments to see what the story is really about and if anything in the summary is accurate.
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I don't think people will leave in any real numbers, but it does mean that I'm less likely to link to a slashdot story (which I have done occasionally in the past when I found the commentary insightful) and more likely to link to whatever it links to, even when the submitter is not a known shill.
The responsible thing to do would be to make this shill an editor, and just be above board about it. That, however, would permit us to ignore the shillstories.
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Bottom line: if you see Kawamoto's name listed as the submitter, you know it's a Dice ad right away.
How is reporting on one's area of interest which is also one's job an ad? Were similar stories submitted by others and the ones from the "corporate overlords" chosen instead? Look at the articles themselves. They are newsworthy and completely factual.
which notes her as "First time accepted submitter Dawn Kawamoto."
So what if the first two submissions from someone are chosen. The important part is that they are good factual news articles. The second submission got a yellow Firehose rating. Someone must have voted for it.
But if you're going to try to pass your content off as news, instead of sponsored content,
How are the facts that the H-1B limit has been reach
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Hurr durr. Defend them oh white knight!!!!1
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To be honest, based on the quality of Slashdot's editors and the rigidity of their article vetting process, I wouldn't be surprised if these were legitimate editorial-independent accepted submissions.
tl:dr: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
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But I fail to see how an article for
1. Star Wars
2. Computer games
3. Software design & coding
4. Software people becoming unemployed
It's seriously difficult to question the value of the info to the target audience.
Now
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I suppose we'll start seeing more stories that have a sensational twist in terms of inducing job-loss fear
When Darth fires someone its like a strangling without the hands on part.
Darth Vader Disney (Score:1)
What kind of a name is "Darth Vader Disney"? Obviously, it should be "Darth Disney".
I wonder if they wrote an article about TNG years ago talking about "Captain Kirk Picard".
Expected (Score:3)
They failed to produce anything of value in the last few years, with the exception of Force Unleashed, but even the sequel was lack lustre.
One one side it can be hard to produce a radical new game/concept, when boxed into the SW franchise. That said they had exclusive access to a big market of SW fans. I really wished they'd release a new version of Tie Fighter/Xwing MMO.
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That said they had exclusive access to a big market of SW fans. I really wished they'd release a new version of Tie Fighter/Xwing MMO.
They had the opportunity to just print money. They could have literally released Tie Fighter (the whole series really) through GOG at five to ten bucks per title and sold it massively with basically no cost to themselves. Then they could sell a DirectX version again. Then they could reboot the franchise and give us some massive single player space battles and print money again, and they could do it with someone else's engine for all it would matter.
I used to work at Disney World (Score:5, Insightful)
about 30 years ago. It was the most degrading job I have ever had. Management treated employees like crap. Day one job training consisted of the boss showing you your locker and uniform, telling you to keep it clean and never take it out of the park, and do things the "Disney way" or get the hell out because there are 10 people lined up outside to take your job.
Re:I used to work at Disney World (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I used to work at Disney World (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no! you have to do what you're told when you're getting paid for it?
They don't let you steal uniforms either? No noes!
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.
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Its a minimum wage job that requires the following skills:
Do what you're told.
Don't steal shit.
What do you expect? A kiss and a hug?
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If I was female or a minority it would have been much worse.
And there's what's wrong with the world today(tm). We're still caught up in the mentality of just being glad it's not worse. One guy says Disney is an asshole and four people show up to tell them they're being a whiny bitch. But dogs run in packs.
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I used to work at Disney too.
You're a whining bitch, to put it bluntly.
There is a REASON there are 10 people lined up outside to take your job, it is perhaps the best job you can find at a young age in central florida.
You should be doing it the Disney Way, the Disney Way makes their customers happy? Have you ever BEEN on a Disney vacation as an adult? You will not find a better service regardless of your tastes.
Yes, it was a shit job, as are all jobs for untrained/uneducated workers, like you know ... the
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From your tone I am guessing you were Disney management in the park, or would have been an excellent management candidate.
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+1 parent. The "Disney Way" is to make customers happy. It's *everyones* job. So if you're a miserable SOB working at a Disney park isn't a great idea.
Working there sounds awful to me, I'm not a people person at all. But I personally know a few people who worked there for a few years and *loved* it. More power to them.
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you worked a minimum wage job 30 years ago, thats totally the same as a software development house
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They're called the "Mickey Mafia" for a reason, ya know...
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
a friend of mine was always telling me I should get that job, because he thought it was the most magical place on earth and it must be wonderful working there.
Seriously the Cult of the Mouse is some scary shit. Makes Scientology look tame in comparison.
Mountains out of mole hills.
It isn't a cult, it isn't scary. Youre just a retard.
Disney is an empire and they do everything they can to protect its image because that's what Disney is, its an image. An image that earns them billions of dollars a year. And Disney world? You better believe they make sure everyone follows very strict guidelines because millions of families go through those parks each year all expecting to have a magical experience that the Disney name lends itself to.
Is mickey a cult? Don't be so melodramatic and idiotic. But youd be really stupid to think that they wont hold their employees to the same standards that's families have about Disney. A potato headed employee can much up a families vacation and ruin some childs image of it, so you better believe they expect you to behave. If you want a job where you don't have to treat the customers like they matter then go to walmart and shut up. No one forces anyone to work at Disney.
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It is fairly insightful, yes.
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No, they said "get the hell out". THAT was day one, within the first 10 minutes.
There are many ways to say things. You can say "our company policy is to do things a specific way and to not remove uniforms from the premises. Violating either is considered grounds for dismissal", or you can say "do things our way or get the hell out!". There really is a difference, even though the two statements say essentially the same thing. The first displays respect for the person being spoken to, the second displays
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I'd bet a weeks pay that you're a liar and no one ever told you to 'get the hell out'.
The fact that you're even pretending it was said brings doubt to you even working there.
As a former Disney employee, you would have been formally informed of policies regarding unapproved language and termination on Disney property. That statement alone would have gotten the person you fired from most positions on the spot.
That happens in HR, not by your boss or trainer.
Your story has too many holes.
Too Bad, Those Games Were Fun (Score:2)
What a shame to shutdown the source of so much fun! I see that they released a couple of the classic games open source, so perhaps some sort of good can come from that.
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yea, I thought "what a shame their games were fun" but that was over a decade ago
lucas what? oh generic starwars hack-n-slash with outdated engines, yawn
News at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Company which hasn't made anything of note in years shut down.
Seriously folks, LucasArts has made some of the greatest games I've ever played, but how long does that keep the lights on? It's not like the brand even has that much value anymore.
Odds are better now (Score:2)
Hey, the odds were on their side. Play the nostalgia card to children-of-the-90s with disposable income?
And that's exactly what Disney is doing. It's not like there will not be Star Wars games. It's just not LucasArts that will be making them, but other studios. And really the whole world will be better off for it, even if Disney is mostly just in it for the money - in fact this way it's MORE likely that a group that really cares about Star Wars might end up making a game.
I find this halarious because I just applied there (Score:2)
All they really needed was to make an Xwing vs TieFighter MMO, where you built up a fleet of ships by running missions, and your guild was your wingmen. It could have had staying power if done right.
That eulogy (Score:5, Insightful)
The studio had the greatest franchise in the history of science fiction and failed. If the employees don't hold themselves responsible, I can see why it's been closed. Considering the epic failure of Kinect Starwars and the near complete disappointment of TOR
And I don't think you can blame the fans for having too high expectations. If TOR was even remotely like a an open ended MMO, people would have been glued to it like flies on shit. But despite the that being the only requirement
I'd be the last person wanting to publicise my failure on a eulogy page, that's just flat out embarassing.
While I'm all for blaming them for their... (Score:1)
shortcomings, TOR, KotOR1/2, JK2/JKA, and dozens of others WERE NOT LUCASARTS. They'd already gotten dumped from the lucrative games by the time that came around, and as someone else mentioned in a prior article's replies, they were handicapped by mismanagement with enough hubris to state that innovation and such wasn't important in the *PROSPECTIVE JOB INTERVIEWS*. IE they were losing their best and brightest from inside, and not regaining any from outside due to MANAGEMENT, not due to the staff themselves
Re:That eulogy (Score:4, Insightful)
You cannot milk a franchise forever, no matter how great it is.
What made the franchise great is that the way it started was new. And no, I'm not even talking about the FX. Yes, they were great. I'm old enough to remember what it was like to sit there in the cinema with people screaming (yes, screaming) at the opening of Episode IV. You know the scene? The Corvette flying overhead and everyone was "whoa, that's detailed, that's so real", and then that Star Destroyer coming in in pursuit... the audience did go wild.
The story was new, too. Before that, SciFi and magic didn't really mix. This was one of the first that catered to both audiences. You also had way more developed characters than was normal in SciFi back then. Sure, it was just a generic Percival theme, mixed with the old war hero that had some personal reasons to disappear into obscurity, the pirate-turned-hero and the young hero eventually saving the day, but the mix was right and novel at its time.
You also had characters that were more than one dimensional stereotypes. The heroes were not without flaws and the Evil (tm) had actually a reason to be evil. Not the usual "we want to destroy the earth just because, well, it's there" crap that was SciFi at the time.
From the 2013 point of view, nothing to write home about. In 1979, it sure was breathing new life into a stale genre. It can be said that it was the beginning of SciFi being more than flashy, gimmicky movies with little plot and storyline.
Sadly, with the new trilogy, they pretty much turned time back pre-1979. In the new trilogy, you have shallow, unbelievable characters who sometimes do things for no logical reason (not even any "human" reason) and plot holes big enough to send an armada of death stars through without them even coming close to their edges. Not to mention alienating the fanbase by tampering with the movies we grew up with and were fond of.
Seriously, movies 1-3 were nothing spectacular. Yes, they were quite watchable. They were decent, but nothing groundbreaking like the first trilogy. Based on those, there is simply no franchise to build. They don't come close to the status the first trilogy had. Not to mention that they really sometimes feel a lot like thinly veiled overlong ads for the merchandise. Seriously, am I the only one who thought Episode One was a too long ad for the podracer game?
What felled Lucasarts eventually was simply that they created an expectation they could not fulfill. The bar was put quite way up there with their original movies and games.
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You cannot milk a franchise forever, no matter how great it is.
Oh, you can. You shouldn't, but you can.
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No, you cannot. To milk it, someone has to fork over money for something with it attached. A franchise is not worth anything by itself, it's not something you can carry to the bank, you can't eat it and you can't live in it. You have to find someone willing to give you money to see your movie, play your game or enjoy your merchandise.
And that someone can only be found if he connects something good with your franchise. People usually don't hand over money for nothing unless you can force them. Even charity g
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Seriously, movies 1-3 were nothing spectacular. Yes, they were quite watchable. They were decent, but nothing groundbreaking like the first trilogy. Based on those, there is simply no franchise to build.
They have another chance with episodes 7-9. They could hardly be worse than episodes 1-3 (jinx!) and they will probably sell toys and games so long as they are at least slightly better.
Not to mention that they really sometimes feel a lot like thinly veiled overlong ads for the merchandise. Seriously, am I the only one who thought Episode One was a too long ad for the podracer game?
No, but I don't agree. It was also an ad for various plastic toys.
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There are a lot of Lensmen similarities in "Star Wars". But since the Lensmen still haven't made into a proper movie, it doesn't make a good example of a film precursor. Someone watching "Star Wars" for the first time in 1977 was comparing it to SF movies like 2001, "Logan's Run", or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"; lots of science, but no magic.
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"The studio had the greatest franchise in the history of science fiction and failed. If the employees don't hold themselves responsible, I can see why it's been closed. Considering the epic failure of Kinect Starwars and the near complete disappointment of TOR .. it's pretty clear that LucasArts Studios has been on pump and dump for some years now. Thinking back, it's hard to recall a Star Wars game since X-Wing which has even come close to meeting expectations of the fans."
You know that Kinect Star Wars is
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there was no effort to keep the space flight sim alive
You mean like Battle for Naboo, Battlefront, Battlefront II, Rogue Squadron, Rogue Squadron II, Rogue Squadron III, Jedi Starfighter, Starfighter and X-Wing Alliance?
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Should have shown Rescue on Fractalus (Score:1)
Instead of all the pictures... I'd have shown the first game - Rescue On Fractalus, and had the Jaggi smash the cockpit window.
That would have been more fitting.
If they wanted to have some fun with it, change the jaggi into mickey mouse.
http://youtu.be/FbZ-chrOgGg [youtu.be]
It's "slew" (Score:1)
So no movie and effigy burning? (Score:2)
So they don't do like when Commodore shut down, where the last employees burnded an effigy of the CEO Mehdi Ali on their farewell party.
Documented by Dave Haynie in The Deathbead Vigil [frogpondmedia.com].
Slew (Score:1)
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 other
Re: (Score:1)
Tales of Monkey Island was sublicensed as well. That was done by Telltale. The re-release of the original Monkey Island was even subliscened.
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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
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Was it the Force Unleashed that basically killed them off? I've only played #1, but lost interest with it after only a short time. I heard #2 was worse than #1.
If 1313 or whatever was by the same team would it really be all that different in quality?
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No idea, Haven't played any of them. GP didn't know what Google was when they posted, so I just corrected.
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Considering you posted this as AC, locating said blog may be difficult.
You are made of fail and loose (Score:2)
Star Wars: Battlefront was a cheap mod for another game.
The Jedi Knight games were made by another company.
Republic Commando was piss poor.
Tales of Monkey Island went downhill when it went 3D, the originals are older then ten years, the recent games were made by Telltale games.
Lego... you are aware that these were not original Lucasarts games either?
No wonder you post as an AC. I would cower to if I called these great lucasarts games.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't care. The company that produced Full Throttle should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want until they die a natural death decades from now.
That game was just too awesome.
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.
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Lucas sold out at least 15 years ago when he started working on Episode 1. Since then he has raped everything Star Wars and even bent poor old Indie over a barrel for a massive royal buttreaming without even the goddamn basic human courtesy of a reach-around (to misquote Full Metal Jacket).
The Disney cash was just the fire sale at the end of a decade-and-a-half of post-sell-out franchise-milking.
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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 th
Re: (Score:2)
You don't like Obama. We get it. Way to go about spewing your hate all over the internet.
There are real people here who just lost their jobs. A game studio that produced some great games in the past just closed. Nobody deserves this kind of problems. And here you go, trying to score political points on their misfortune.
FWIW, the folks at LucasArts have my condolences. I hope you all get jobs soon, and thanks for the memories.
As for the Anonymous Coward (how appropriate)- what goes around, comes around. Enjo
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Lucas sold out in 2012 to avoid the Obama tax increases.
I bet you're the kind of guy who blames Obama when they get your order wrong at McDonalds, aren't you?
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Looking at the list of directors of LucasFilm movies over the years, one can determine the time of death. 1999, when Lucas started directing again. Specifically, right at the point in the script of TPM when Qui-Gon saves Gungan Jar Jar Binks from being crushed alive.
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....