space
head
head head head
Home Contact RSS Feed
COMICS   •   MOVIES   •   MUSIC   •   TELEVISION   •   GAMES   •   BOOKS
Disney Decides To Close LucasArts; What’s It Mean For Games Like ‘Star Wars 1313’?
space
The Movie God   |  @   |  

Star Wars 1313 Image

It’s been often wondered since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and the announcement of new Star Wars movies whether or not the company would revive or ultimately ruin this beloved franchise. That answer is not yet known, and will not be known for a while—at least not until we see what they do with Star Wars Episode VII. But no matter what happens with the movies, fans have known that some things would be changing…things that they might not necessarily be happy about.

The first notable change that upset certain fans was the cancellation of The Clone Wars, the popular animated series on Cartoon Network. Now comes a painful strike to gamers, as Disney has decided to close down LucasArts, the video game development and publishing division responsible for Star Wars titles such as Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, and The Force Unleashed, as well as some non-Star Wars games like the Monkey Island series.

So what does this mean for the future of these game properties and highly anticipated future games like Star Wars 1313?

Here’s a statement from a LucasArts representative on the decision:

“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.”

Though this is sad news for longtime fans of LucasArts, it’s not that shocking considering their recent games. The Force Unleashed releases were about as good as their games got in the past handful of years or so, and even those were only decent. Their final game was Kinect Star Wars, which was…well, it was pretty awful.

But last June at E3 a new game appeared, and had fans of Star Wars video games feeling something they maybe haven’t felt in a while: excitement. The game is the aforementioned Star Wars 1313, and watching the brief videos they showed for it, you can see exactly why people were so excited.

Does Disney’s closure of LucasArts mean Star Wars 1313 is now dead? Perhaps not.

According to a Game Informer chat with a rep from Lucasfilm, this does not necessarily mean the end of not only 1313, but other LucasArts properties as well.

As you read in the statement above, the decision is not to dump LucasArts and everything it’s been working on into the garbage and move on. The decision is to stop spending money on developing and publishing all of their games, and instead focusing on licensing out their properties to other companies to make.

Here’s what the rep said:

“All of these things happened at once. Naturally, as any company that goes through a big announcement like this, you have to look through your whole portfolio and realign some things. 1313 was looking fantastic, the reception has been great. Our other unannounced titles are fine, it just got to a point where from a business standpoint we couldn’t continue developing those internally and keep up with the direction that the company was going.

It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we’re just looking at different models rather than internal production… They’re evaluating everything. There’s always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing.

It’s super sad. It’s a terrible day. I want to make sure everyone realizes that there still will be Star Wars games out there.”

Now we just need to wonder who will be interested in working with Lucasfilm to make their games, and which games will still find their way to the light of day.

If you had your choice of which game companies could take on one of the LucasArts games, who would make what? The obvious ones are of course finding a way to get Tim Schafer and Double Fine working on more Monkey Island games and other popular titles he’s worked on for LucasArts in the past, and BioWare already has their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, so they too could be a great option for a future game.

But there’s plenty of other cool dream scenarios. A huge new Star Wars RPG made by Bethesda? A new Indiana Jones game made closer to the style of Uncharted and the new Tomb Raider—two franchises that were inspired by Indiana Jones in the first place?

Which game company do you want to see making what LucasArts game?

[Source: Game Informer]

1 Comment »

  1. I think it’s for the BEST. Lucasarts was falling behind the times with gameplay, graphics engines, and overall inventiveness anyway. I always thought that after looking at other games.. .how much better they would be.. with these franchises.. if left to a more well suited developer. Reminds me of the new ALIENS Colonial Marines game… just not good… but imagine if the developers of the new Tomb Raider, or Uncharted, etc. got a hold of it.

    Comment by George Mezori — April 5, 2013 @ 2:40 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

space
Topics: News, Video Games
space
Previous Article
space
Next Article
«
»
space
space
space
Amazon.com
space
You may have noticed that we're now AD FREE! Please support Geeks of Doom by using the Amazon Affiliate link above. All of our proceeds from the program go toward maintaining this site.
space
Geeks of Doom on Twitter Geeks of Doom on Facebook Geeks of Doom on Instagram Follow Geeks of Doom on Tumblr Geeks of Doom on YouTube Geeks of Doom Email Digest Geeks of Doom RSS Feed
space
space
space
space
The Drill Down Podcast TARDISblend Podcast Westworld Podcast
2023  ·   2022  ·   2021  ·   2020  ·   2019  ·   2018  ·   2017  ·   2016  ·   2015  ·   2014  ·  
2013  ·   2012  ·   2011  ·   2010  ·   2009  ·   2008  ·   2007  ·   2006  ·   2005
space
Geeks of Doom is proudly powered by WordPress.

Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press

Geeks of Doom is designed and maintained by our geeky webmaster
All original content copyright ©2005-2023 Geeks of Doom
All external content copyright of its respective owner, except where noted
space
Creative Commons License
This website is licensed under
a Creative Commons License.
space
About | Privacy Policy | Contact
space