Farewell and Thanks For All The Games

In case you've been in an ice cave with your feet frozen to the ceiling (watch out for the Wampa!), the gaming world experienced a great loss last week. Disney, who purchased LucasFilm in Oct. 2012, has decided to close LucasArts. Gamers my age and older fondly remember LucasArts for many things, especially point-and-click adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango. Aside from this, many other gamers will be more familiar with the myriad Star Wars games the studio developed and distributed: KOTOR, the Battlefront series, Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight/Academy and many others.

I am personally devastated by this news. Granted, LucasArts has been struggling for years. Lagging game sales, mediocre reviews, and revolving leadership have been telltale signs that something has been amiss for some time. It seems that many of the people involved had a feeling something like this was coming, and were not terribly surprised. Regardless, gamers are generally quite upset about this course of action -- including myself.

Let's pause for a second.

I completely understand that Disney is a for-profit business. In fact, they are a business that has not had a good track record with video games. This business obtained a video game publisher. Publisher has not been performing well for a while and was not showing any signs that this was going to change. The business had to make a choice. Should they keep a failing developer/publisher open and risk hemorrhaging money, or close it and cut it's losses? The "business" decision is clear.

Am I upset? You bet you shiny metal ass.

Did Disney make a good, sound business decision? Sure.

Here's the official statement made by Disney about their 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."

Basically, LucasArts is dead and Disney is planning to licence third parties to make games for franchises that LucasArts had previously owned. The question now is: what's going to happen to all of these beloved franchises?

At first thought, and going by the fact that Disney has officially stated that the two current Star Wars games that were in development have been cancelled, things don't look good. It appears that many of the franchises which made LucasArts a gaming staple will be lost. Personally, I didn't grow up with most of the LucasArts adventure games. I played a revamped Monkey Island back on my PS2, but that was about it. Largely speaking, I was exposed to most of their later Star Wars games. Even at that, I'm incredibly sad about losing much of the studio's legacy.

Disney's track record with video games also fills me with dread. Even after two moderately successful Mickey Mouse games, they still closed Junction Point. Warren Spector be damned, apparently. Add in the reports that Disney never completed setting up LucasArts employees with benefits, it feels like Disney is dead set against in-house game development and publishing.

(See what I did there?)

...then I think about it more. And maybe this isn't the worst thing ever. Licensing old LucasArts franchises instead of in-house development might work out better in the long run. If you look at the history of the Star Wars franchise, at least, the best games were NOT developed by LucasArts; only published by them. Jedi Knight II was developed by Raven, Battlefront by Pandemic, KOTOR by BioWare, and X-Wing by Totally Games. These are arguably some of the best Star Wars games ever made. On the other hand, Force Unleashed was made in-house by LucasArts and got very mixed reviews. Star Wars Kinect was also developed in-house by LucasArts...and we all know how that turned out.

Though the official statement is that the current in-development games Star Wars 1313 and Star Wars: Frontal Assault are canceled, perhaps there is a chance that someone else will pick them up. There certainly seem to be some conflicting reports about this. After all, it's not completely unheard of. Sleeping Dogs began development as True Crime: Hong Kong. At some point, Activision decided to cancel the game, but Square Enix picked up the rights to it and saw it through to completion and publication. The end product received generally positive reviews, but it was not exactly a stand-out. While this precedent is not exactly promising, it does point to a possible path for these canceled Star Wars games that were generating quite a bit of buzz.

As for the old-school LucasArts adventure game IPs, the road might be a bit rougher. As pointed out by some of the editors at GameInformer, the financial returns on the adventure game franchises like Monkey Island are not huge. So, the chances of these game seeing the light of day again are questionable. Maybe Disney will refuse to sell these or license them out to avoid losing money; but at the same time, Disney could sell them if they see no long-term value in them. We can hope for the latter.

...I'm so...nervous...
(and maybe a little constipated)

One way or another, the reality is that LucasArts is now only a legacy of the video game industry. Some people are now starting to guess (read: dream) what developers may try to license and develop some of the previous LucasArts properties. As far as Star Wars games go, I think this list is pretty well thought out. I love the idea of DICE taking on the Battlefront formula, but I think RockSteady would be a great fit for both Jedi Knight and Star Wars 1313. Since they are not doing the new Batman game...well, my mind wanders. As far as the adventure games go, I think Tell Tale and Double Fine are obvious choices for most of these. Perhaps Ron Gilbert will try to reclaim some of his babies, someday. Let's not forget that Kickstarter may turn out being an unexpected wrinkle in all of this, too.

Gnome, out.