Disney Shuts Down Lucas Arts Games

[The_Blunt]

http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749

Well. That's the end of that. No more Star Wars 1313 or First Assault.

...yup. Thanks, George.

[Cottoinc]

Wow let the people finish there work before firing them. But it is not uncommon for developers to form new studios once fired. If I was them I would group together get the rights to finish the games and make a quick paycheck. But most likely that will not happen.

Lucas Rep Says Star Wars 1313 Might Be Saved
They may farm it out to another developer.

[Stryker0022]

WTF!!! Now there's no chance for Battlefront 3... It's a sad day my friends 😥.

A moment of silence please.....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hogezz]

That's not what I took from either of those articles. They may just license out those games now to other devs. So it's not the worst news.

[mdg60]

Being the eternal optimist, I see this as possibly a good thing. If they do let other developers work on these titles, then a Battlefront 3 may possibly be produced by a more competent developer and the chances we will see a Battlefront 3 might actually go up.

[Cottoinc]

Interesting turn of events Raven has released the source code for the Jedi Knight series for modders. Might be a good time to pick up this game on steam. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/04/ra...i-source-code/

[BOSS]

I wouldn't say it's the end of SWBF3, I mean LA wasn't doing anything to make that game a reality anyway. Giving the license to other developers is a good thing IMO. Now we might actually see some good SW games come out.

[Kamui]

I'm going to make a very long post so bear with me. So this will be the introductory post to Muimania(Thanks Reaver).

For a long time now we all know that Lucasarts have been slacking off since the end of the 90s. While they had brought us steller games in the first decade of the 2000s, It started to deteriorate. It became most noticeable during the release of Star Wars Battlefront II, And it's subtraction of features(like proning,etc), that were removed subsequently.

Then enter the 'Patch'. it was luck that SWBF received a patch on all platforms it was released on, But SWBF2? Not so lucky at all, and infact I call bullshit on the whole shennanigan.
Microsoft gave Lucasarts a good blowjob in order to get the DLC characters, and stages on the Xbox. PS2 and PC version were left in the dumps. Fortunately for the PC version there were mod tools and players were able to create their very own unique maps, and custom characters.

Now for the PS2 version? We got shit out of luck and since this was the version I started out with, I was very peeved about how the PS2 version of the game got shafted and left with all the ingame bugs and what not. Yea the clan managed, We made the best of it and even managed to have scrimmages, server raids and what not.

There were some days where the game trolled us into thinkings that LA was actually going to get the game patched, but that never happened. There was no excuse not to patch the game, Because any online game on the PS2 was capable of being patched; Hell even all Socoms got a patch in one way or another.
The PS2 servers were mysteriously closed down and Lucasarts made no comment or word about it, But thankfully in the the wake of that people were at least able to purchase their own servers, And download a server manager. Does anybody still have that server manager for shits and giggles?

Lucasarts just kept on shooting themselves in the feet, By not releasing a game that could have given them a good amount of money even to today being a 360/PS3 release would have made it an epic, but for Lucasarts? Lets go down into some shithistory.

-SWBF:Renegade Squadron
-SWBF:Elite Squadron
(How many squardrons are enough?)
SW:Kinect
SW:TFU
SW:TFU2
SW::Uncharted(I mean 1313 which is probably in developer limbo)

Tell me....what happened to good games like Bounty Hunter, Rogue Squadron, Shadows of the Empire, Battlefront? It's like "lets ignore the good games that fans loved a ton, and make shit projects for quick cash.", and going back to SWBF2, this is what they did; they released it to coincide with the Episode 3 release. Isn't that great? Rush a game out to meet the release expectations of the movie dvd.

[Deslock]

I have to agree with MDG and Kamui on this.

It's not neccesarily a bad thing. LA hasn't done anything good in many, many years. They had excellent IP's, but they totally failed on using them to their full potential.

I would like to think that if anyone here owned the SW franchise, with access to material like "Splinter of the Mind's eye, and all of Timothy Zahn's books, could come up with better games ideas than that pair of clown shoes that was both of SWTFU's, and Star Wars Kinnect.

I mean really...You have access to all this wonderful source material, and the best they can come up with is.....:

A Star Wars dancing game.... REALLY !!??!

Like Kamui said, where was a new Tie Fighter, Rogue Squadron, SWBF 3 ? You know, those properties that fans already knew, loved, and wanted more of ?

It was incompetence of epic magnitudes.

LA became the epitome of EPIC FAIL. They deserved to shut down and fired. I just feel bad for the poor working stiffs that just got laid off. I'm quite sure all the corporates got their golden parachutes though, as always.

This is an older interview, but it certainly explains a lot from an insiders view, and it's a very good read about how Lucas became what he is now. :

http://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/8/

Hopefully all those good former Dev's can get better jobs at better studios.

For myself, I cannot understand why the Star Wars franchises couldn't have been just as good or even better; than Skyrim, or Bioshock infinite.
It all just boils down to a total lack of vision for the franchise as a whole. What a damn shame. Maybe now that things have changed, perhaps Disney can do better.
They certainly couldn't do worse with it. *hopes*

We'll just have to wait and see.

[mdg60]

I know this probably wouldn't happen, but I would love it if Naughty Dog were to make a Star Wars game. With the Uncharted Series, old school Crash Bandicoot, and the upcoming The Last of Us, Naughty Dog has proven to produce quality games.

[RaTix]

I think the important thing to remember here is that Lucas Arts was only a publisher, NOT a developer. They weren't actually designing and creating the games themselves. It's the same thing as if Activision or EA closed down. All the titles under those publishers wouldn't necessarily just disappear. Other publishers could pick them up. If they were willing to sell the IP rights of the game to the new publisher.

Disney on the other hand has their own game publishing studio, Disney Interactive Studios. They already own all the Lucas Arts IP rights, so it makes sense that they would close Lucas Arts down and just combine it into their already established studio. Maybe they will actually do it right and allow the Developers they hire to make the game, enough time to actually make them right.

[Reaver]

Very good point, I didn't think about that. I just hope this move didn't kill any chances for SWBFIII... It's not like we've been waiting almost decade for it.

[BOSS]

Good point Ratix. It's not like we were in any danger of seeing SWBF3 with Lucas Arts at the helm anyway...

[mdg60]

As always, the Emperor clears things up for us.

[Deslock]

LA should've been awesome.

But for whatever reasons we'll never know, the corporates and Lucas kept them down.

Think of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max, Tie Fighter, the awesome X-Wing and Rogue Squadron series, Kotor, Hell, even Jedi Academy.

There was a time when the LA logo was a symbol of quality and execellence. :)

Many of the really good guiding light people at LA left.

IMO the last really good games LA had were SWBF 1&2, and even they weren't developed by LA. And that was waaay back in 2005 & 2006.

Hell, I enjoyed the Lego Star Wars games, and LA didn't even develop that.

As I said before, anyone here at the DSA could've done better with the franchise subject material than any of the suits at LA.

Why in the Hell would they greenlight a Star Wars dancing game, over producing a new SWBF 3 is beyond mind boggling, and surely shows their "pants on head" stupidity and total incompetence. And a total lack of business accumen, and a lack of understanding of their own customer base.

I might be the most saddest half assed person in the world, but you can bet your ass if I owned the Tomb Raider franchise, I'd sure as F'k not make a Lara Croft dancing game, just for a quick profit. Even with the jiggling boobs. :)

Is it a shame that Disney shut down LA ?, historically speaking yes.

But in the end;

Nothing of importance was lost. Besides all those poor working Joes being thrown out on their asses because of their bosses's poor decision making in the long run.

In the end, we might finally see SWBF3 come out, and be done by people that actually give a shit about it. :D