
Disney Shuts Down LucasArts - Lightning
http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749
======
octo_t
Here's how fucked the games business is: Tomb Raider sold 3.5 million units in
4 weeks, and yet failed to meet sales expectations. Hitman sold the same, and
Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million and they both failed to meet expectations.
Square Enix lost over $150m last year, despite those three critically and
commercially (by any reasonable metric) games coming out. Despite selling
millions of copies they aren't profitable because game budgets are too high.

EA thinks that next gen budgets will be "only"10% higher than this gen. That
means that gmaes need to sell _at least_ 10% more units than current games are
doing, and eren that will only guarantee the losses of tens of millions we're
seeing now. To be profitable they'll need to sell far far more. On consoles
that, because they are new, will have a limited user base anyway. Either that
or raise the price to make up the shortfall. In the middle of the longest
recession in a century.

The industry is _fucked_

The only way to make money from games is what Disney have done, license the IP
to other companies and get them to pay for it.

~~~
ebbv
The AAA side of the industry is fucked up much like the big money side of
movies and other stuff is often fucked up; because it not only has to pay all
the creative folks but it has to pay for a slew of empty suits and massive,
massive marketing campaigns.

I think that's why we're seeing such a rise of indie developers. People credit
Kickstarter but I think Kickstarter's popularity and success is a result of
the move to indie development rather than a cause of it (or maybe a little of
both.)

There will always be talented people who want to make games and they will find
a way to do it. Look at the old days that Commander Keen, Wolf3D, DOOM and
many other shareware games came from. A bunch of independent BBSes where the
shareware games where passed around and talked about purely through word of
mouth. Rampant piracy, far worse than today, and yet those games made money
for their creators.

You may be right, the EAs, the Activisions and other bloated monstrosities may
be fucked. And to them I say good riddance. I love, love, love Bioshock
Infinite, but if the $100 million dollar budget games are a dinosaur on its
way out, I won't mourn it too much.

~~~
just2n
This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot
of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc.

These markets were literally flooded with massive volume in games. You went to
the store and could literally not decide what you wanted to play, because
there were 30+ games you had never seen, you wanted to play them all, and
another 30+ for a console you didn't own. And then a few months later, there
were 20+ new ones.

All of these games were relatively simple, creative, outside the box, not
hyped nor mentioned in any advertising anywhere. And almost all of them kicked
ass. Because they were still analog cartridge-ey and/or required a CD to play,
you didn't want to own hundreds of games (even though you could because most
were priced very reasonably), so it was amazing when things like Sega Channel
came out. That was one of the truly awesome things I remember as a kid, even
though it was short lived.

I miss those days. Now it's AAA title that took 3+ years to make that looks
good but has almost nothing to it. Back then, a $5 game that took a company 1
programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer, and about 2 weeks to make had
significantly more playability to it. What happened to the industry?

~~~
subsection1h

        you didn't want to own hundreds of games
    

I wanted to own hundreds of NES games because they didn't have remotely as
much replay value as good modern games such as Counter Strike. (Heh, Counter
Strike is the best example I have of a good modern game because it's the last
game I played regularly.)

    
    
        even though you could because most were priced very reasonably
    

Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax. I specifically recall
that Double Dragon cost me $54.99 plus tax.

~~~
286c8cb04bda
_> Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax._

Wolfram Alpha says[1] that's ~$90 today.

1:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%20...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%202013)

~~~
SkittlesNTwix
It's interesting to reflect on this number, when you realize that the latest
AAA platform title (whatever AAA meant in that particular day/age) have always
cost about $50-60 in the past $$ terms of that day, regards of when in the
past 20 years we're talking about. So you paid $90 worth of value in 1990 and
we pay $49.99 today. What I mean to say is that games were EXPENSIVE back
then!

~~~
voltagex_
Heh, here in Australia it used to be $50, now it's $90-110

~~~
sjwright
I think you still have rose tinted glasses. I still remember paying about
AU$80 for Sonic The Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Master System, and about AU$90 for
Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive.

In real terms, games are cheaper here too.

(Another reason for lower prices would also be lower unit costs -- a ROM
cartridge surely cost more to manufacture than an optical disc. And the gaming
audience is now much larger than it used to be.)

------
Lewisham
FWIW, this is not the first time LucasArts existed as a licensing arm and not
a development house. For much of Jim Ward's tenure in the mid-2000s LucasArts
was essentially what Disney is positioning it as now. LucasArts as everyone
knew it died a long time ago, the most upsetting thing was that the company
that was left had no vision past the Star Wars license, leaving all the other
IP to rot.

My hope is that Disney actually has a more holistic view on the LucasArts
properties, because it's used to managing many diverse properties in a way
LucasFilm was not. Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle etc etc might actually
get released out to those who want them. This might be the best thing that has
happened to LucasArts and its fans, but of course the job losses are
disheartening.

~~~
dccoolgai
I hope you are right.. probably dating myself by saying this, but I remember
playing MI when I was younger..it felt like magic. I felt so sucked into that
world, I used to just listen to the soundtrack for hours.

~~~
kilian
Fun fact: the original monkey island CD was a music CD with the soundtrack,
too. This is possible because music is written to a cd outside-in and date
inside-out (or visa versa, I forget). This blew my mind as a kid, and you
could even see the physical distinction on the cd between the two data streams
as well.

~~~
jimgumbley
I believe the data was in the pregap and other than that it was just a normal
CD. The physical distinction was probs something else.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap>

------
ChuckMcM
Its sad, although its sad like hearing your great aunt who has been "alive"
but effectively a not present due to dementia for the last 3 years finally
succumbed to some sort of illness. At one time Lucasarts was an amazing studio
with amazing vision, but that time ended a while ago.

I agree with others that the games business is once again facing a crisis of
its own creation. In part because "games" are a product with a very difficult
to pin down place.

Prior to computers, "Games" were either "Board games" where you bought the box
and tokens and a ruleset, or "Card games" where you used an existing platform
and implemented your own game by applying specific rules. The former is fairly
easy to monetize, the latter not so much. Computer games are kind of like
board games without the physical cost of making the tokens. But sometimes they
are like card games where the platform is shared and a bunch of people can
play at the same time.

The crisis seems to have evolved around dependence on getting $50 - $60 per
copy sold. Which got disrupted by both the 'pay per month' market and the
mobile/facebook market.

I wonder when folks evaluate the various Kickstarter efforts if they can come
up with a new business model for more modestly priced games.

------
ebbv
> 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...

In other words: by closing the studio we can just collect checks from
licensing our IPs which gets turned into bonuses for our executives while we
don't have to pay any developers, artists, designers or other filthy wage
slaves.

~~~
Apocryphon
If Project Eternity and the South Park RPG go well, does that mean that
Obsidian might get a chance at KOTOR III?

~~~
MrMember
That Star Wars license won't come cheap. Would the $4 million they raised on
Kickstarter for Eternity even cover the licensing fees?

------
BurritoAlPastor
Well, it's about damn time.

There's a lot of "Oh no! Not LucasArts! I loved Monkey Island / Grim Fandango
/ Zombies Ate My Neighbors / Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures!" talk going
around, but that's misguided and a testament to the power of a brand. Unless
I've missed my mark, LucasArts has developed in-house a total of two games in
the last eight years. (Force Unleashed and Force Unleashed II. I thought they
were mediocre.)

This isn't Disney laying off developers so they can just make money off
licensing and publishing; this is Disney consolidating a (historically
troubled) licensing-and-publishing business into their existing (and very
good) licensing-and-publishing infrastructure.

Everyone who made your favorite LucasArts game hasn't worked there in a long
time.

------
smtddr
>> _looks at the calendar_ >>

Oh %$#@!, it's not April 1st anymore...

This can't be happening. :(

I was hoping the title was sensational and that they're just moving the staff
to a Disney corp building. But the article is confirming the worse case. How
can this be?! I'm not a starwars fan, but I'm pretty sure that whole thing is
still making money on t-shirts & mugs & stuff.... right?!

~~~
jechen
This marks the first time I've felt genuinely saddened by the shutdown of a
game studio. LucasArts made some of the best games I played as a kid, it's a
shame they couldn't follow up their legacy in recent years. :(

~~~
spangborn
I miss the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series, especially the awesome X-Wing vs TIE
Fighter game. I would have loved to see a modern remake of those games.

~~~
throwaway1979
The space fighter genre seems to be lost. I did some research a few years ago
trying to understand what happened. Not enough market demand was the answer.
The same goes for Mech games and flight sims. We live in a cold world some
days :(

~~~
ArtB
There is MechWarrior online in a freemium open beta and another mecha but more
FPSy game in development I can't recall right now.

~~~
gknoy
Hawken. It's fun. :) Low complexity, but seems to reward skill.

------
zacharycohn
On one hand, I'm sad that the studio that created Full Throttle, Dark Forces
and Jedi Knight, and many other games from my childhood is gone.

On the other hand, they haven't made a great game in a very long time. Even
The Force Unleashed was just okay, but not stellar.

~~~
potatolicious
Yeah, I for one am not weeping _that_ hard.

MicroProse was stagnant for a long time and then finally went under - the
resulting sale gave us, finally after so many years, a _great_ X-Com game
(with another on the way).

The death of a game studio can have a (pretty thick) silver lining. When THQ
went down it auctioned off its franchises - and forced a changing of the guard
for some franchises that have been stagnant.

------
quaunaut
The week after GDC. 'Cause y'know, who might want to go looking for a job at
the biggest game developer convention in the world?

~~~
Zikes
It's my understanding that the writing has been on the wall for some time now.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of the employees secured new jobs before this
was announced.

~~~
airfoil
This is correct. Once the Disney deal was announced, LucasArts folks had a
feeling there wasn't much time left. I know a few people who left LucasArts
for exactly the reason you describe.

------
mhd
I was looking forward to StarWars 1313. Showing the seedier side of the
universe would've been a welcome change to the "All Jedi, all the time" stance
of, well, everything SW-related since the prequels came out.

~~~
prawks
Same, I cannot believe they're cutting this. That game looked fantastic.

~~~
Lewisham
To be fair, so did Force Unleashed, but that was not a great game.

~~~
DannoHung
Force Unleashed was a solid brawler that needed a little tweaking to make it
really good. Then they managed to royally screw it up in FU2.

Still not sure what happened there.

------
mikeocool
Maybe this means the Grim Fandango IP will be sold off in a fire sale, and Tim
Schafer can do a second wildly successful KickStarter to buy it and make Grim
Fandango 2!

~~~
MartinCron
I don't need a Grim Fandango 2, though I would really love a Grim Fandango HD
for consoles and/or tablets.

------
kanja
Were they not making a profit? It's hard for me to see the logic behind this
decision - I thought the starwars games were all pulling in a decent amount.
The other ip as well. What a shame.

~~~
raverbashing
And I believe that's what killed them

'Management' shut down everything that was not a SW game some time ago.

Gone were all the other game lines.

The Lucasarts of 15 years ago will be sorely missed.

(Except configuring your SB card with setup.exe)

------
throwaway1979
Claimed another victim, has the mobile-gaming wars. </yoda-speak>

In all seriousness ... I am very saddened by this news. I few up playing
Monkey Island, Indy Jones, etc. I was thinking of buying all the Monkey Island
games again on my iPad but didn't have the time.

~~~
evan_
Which doesn't even make sense, I would buy an iPad port of Full Throttle so
fast.

~~~
ry0ohki
Except that it has to be priced at $.99-$1.99 for most people to do so...

~~~
GFischer
Are you sure? From what I read, the big gap is between Free and Non-Free.

After that, I think that some marketing could convince the vast majority to
pay a lot more than 99 cents (I did, for Plants vs Zombies).

I'd pay somewhere around U$ 5 per game myself :)

~~~
rmc
$5? Games used to cost $50!! You'd only pay a tenth of what games used to
cost.

~~~
GFischer
An equivalent game for PC (say a Telltale Games Sam & Max episode) costs U$ 9.
The Sims 3 costs U$ 19.

You're comparing the adventure games to the massively expensive FPS or RPG or
other stuff with awesome graphics and all that :) .

And, to be honest, I never paid U$ 50 for any game upfront (PC, console,
boardgame, anything), and I believe 99.9% of the gaming population in my
country (Uruguay) hasn't either :) . That's the realm of US and European teens
that can afford them (well, their parents can).

I did buy secondhand console games and other stuff :) , and I've paid far more
for my M:TG collection, but on 4 to 10 dollar installments :) .

------
shawnbaden
I think Telltale Games is the current version of the old LucasArts we all feel
nostalgic for.

~~~
GFischer
I'm really hoping for some Telltale Games for Android.

I really don't have the time for PC games, but I sometimes have long (4+ hour)
bus trips, and an Android adventure game would be amazing.

I'd also like an old X-com remake for android, and some other tower defense
games besides Plants vs Zombies (or PvZ 2 :) ). PvZ was the first Android game
I've bought.

~~~
yareally
Not an Android solution, but a Surface Pro could probably play them okay if
you don't want a full out computer or laptop.

------
smrtinsert
I really wish the Loom IP was going somewhere besides Disney's vault (pun
intended, but unfortunately its not the valuable vault).

That game needed so many sequels. It was fantastic.

------
sho_hn
This makes me quite hopeful. The way I see it, the folks who made the games I
cared about were long gone; with the IP holder focusing on licensing /
contracting out, they might get to work on those IPs again after all. I
enjoyed Tales of Monkey Island (LucasArts-published but Telltale-developed
sequel with some of the original talent on board). The internal studio that
had to be kept busy was probably more of a potential impediment to that.

------
benwerd
The Secret of Monkey Island is my favorite game of all time and their games in
totality were a formative experience when I was growing up - I'm really sad to
see them go. Booo.

On the other hand, hey, Disney owns Monkey Island. I'd love them to do
something with it.

~~~
valgaze
Some diehards think Disney already did something with it:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8dpLebI-4s>

~~~
DerekL
Someone claims that the writer of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the
Black Pearl' had previously worked on a script for a Monkey Island movie.

[http://www.worldofmi.com/comments.php?type=news&id=1259&...](http://www.worldofmi.com/comments.php?type=news&id=1259&action=read)

------
darkchasma
This is great news. LucasArts hasn't done anything with the brand that I've
actually liked. I want to see more BioWare style licensing deals, and can only
hope for a KOTR3

~~~
enjo
I remain absolutely flummoxed that we've never gotten another KOTOR. It's
really the most baffling decision...ever.

------
swang
Great. This means we'll never seen a Day of the Tentacle remake/sequel :(

~~~
6thSigma
DOTT is quite possibly my favorite video game of all time. I really hope Tim
Schaefer gets this IP.

~~~
DoggettCK
This, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle.

------
frncscgmz
Sad news. Grim Fandango is one of my favorite games of all time. What's gonna
happen to the licenses to all those old games? I just hope they're given at
least the Steam/GOG treatment and don't become vaporware.

------
talmand
I find it interesting how many people in this thread are saddened over the
closing of LucasArts speaking of the classic games they loved from their
childhoods.

Please keep in mind that the development studio that closed down is not the
same thing that made the classics we all cherish. What we know as LucasArts
died a long time ago.

I'm more saddened at the thought of developers losing their jobs and I'm
hopeful that many of them had opportunities to get out ahead of time.

------
rafaelc
While it isn't surprising that Disney made a business decision, the suddenness
is shocking, at least based on how the article portrays this going down.

Any folks at LucasArts that need help finding a job (and happen to be reading
this) just shoot me an email - I'm happy to help and my email is in my
profile.

Edit: non-technical too, just figured I can try to help anyone that is
impacted by this!

------
datalus
LucasArts as a developer hasn't made a good game for at least a decade. All of
the good Star Wars games were third party like KOTOR by BioWare. So it makes
sense to use the LucasArts as a publisher only. Still I am saddened that an
iconic developer from my childhood game days has been put to pasture.

------
alan_cx
Dunno what the problem is here. Switching to licencing and letting other
developers in on the action seems smart to me. Much more potential to do
something innovative or just different. Bummer for the employees, but such is
life. If they were or are any good, Im sure they will find new work.

As for anticipated dark plot type games, well, its Disney. They aren't going
to do that, are they? They do family fluffy stuff.

Oh, old men: stop trying to take a kids franchise and expecting it to be grown
up and adult. We get the same BS here in the UK about Dr Who. Same problem,
old fans forgetting that is a kids show. Starwars is for kids, and _us_ adults
who refuse to grow up. But make no mistake, this is a kids franchise first.

That said, I do think Dr Who lets adults in better than the last 3 SW films
did.

------
hatter10_6
As many have pointed out, the cost of developing a game has escalated to a
level where few companies can afford it. I wonder if the development industry
is ripe to move from vertical integration to further specialization.

For example, we could have a standardized 3D environment format, where some
companies specialize in creating those. Other companies could specialize in
creating characters, others physics engines, story development, or direction.

An added benefit of this is a potential for game worlds to connect to each
other (this has always been a dream of mine).

I know the industry is already specialized into development studios and
publishers. I wonder if further specialization could spread out the risk, and
increase the competitiveness of each party, even more.

------
erickhill
The feeling I had when I first played Dark Forces was very similar to when I
first tried Angry Birds: Star Wars. It was something akin to an a-ha moment
like, "Wow, this game is SO much better now. The game play actually makes
sense in this universe with these characters!"

DF was, at the time, an alternative to single-player Quake and Unreal, etc.
and the overall feeling and theme (in my view) was spot on. Plus, it had a
/story/ which many 1st-person shooters sorely lacked. Wolfenstein was really
the only other one that really kicked ass, and it was ancient at that time. DF
wasn't just a shooting simulator. It was ... immersive (which sounds so
cliche, but it truly was).

RIP, LucasArts.

------
tenpoundhammer
Indie Games are safer; small budget, small sales, still success. AAA games are
gambles; huge budgets, great sales, are failures, they must have psychotically
high sales numbers. I predict AAA titles will be fewer and fewer. Hopefully
our gaming consoles will be augmenting that with smaller titles in the future.

It will be just like the movie business, usually you pay a little to rent
decent movies run of the mill movies and watch them at home, and every once in
a while you will pay theater prices to see Avatar or Harry Potter or whatever
is hyper big budget and popular.

Gaming is still a young industry that needs time to find itself.

------
mprinz
It's a shame. They made such great games back in their golden era. Why didn't
they just cut down the team size and tried to develop some kind of Indie
games, instead of yet another AAA Star Wars bullshit? They formed game design
icons like Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Noah Falstein, Hal Barwood and Brian
Moriarty - Bring only one of them back to work on a small scale project and
the result would be amazing.

But nah...whose asking me...

------
avelis
[http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Disney-Game-over-
at...](http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Disney-Game-over-at-S-F-s-
LucasArts-4407769.php)

Here is the SF Gate article on it. I thought I would share it because it has
some pictures of the campus. I have driven and walked by it and will be sad to
see it go.

------
pla3rhat3r
Their Star Wars games and Lego series were pretty good. I loved some of the
old titles as well. I'm sad for all those incredible people who are now
looking for work. I've been to that office and a lot of really great people
poured their very being into that company. I'm sure they'll all land on their
feet though.

------
Glyptodon
Why wasn't it worth finishing the game in their pipeline? If it's mostly
developed and they treat sunk costs as sunk costs isn't it basically throwing
away money to cancel something that's pretty far along in development?

~~~
saraid216
I'm... not sure you understand how the sunk cost fallacy works...

If anything, what they did was the rational decision.

~~~
lwat
If it's gonna cost X to finish the game and they expect to make more than X
from selling the game, then they should finish it. The amount spent to date is
irrelevant.

~~~
saraid216
The current history of video game sales expectations has been "expected too
much", "expected too much", and "expected too much".

I'm willing to bet that they did not expect to make more than X by selling the
game.

------
SkittlesNTwix
Could someone with experience in the field, please elaborate on how the unit-
expectation numbers are calculated? At the risk of sounding obvious, is it
possible that the models used to gauge expectations are outdated?

------
reiichiroh
Anyone remember Acclaim and THQ made their money making licensed (and
thoroughly crappy) games for Disney? Before they went and bought original
properties/studios? Now both Acclaim and THQ are dead.

------
markstahler
I guess we will have to wait for some Kickstarter project for the next "Tie
Fighter" or "X-Wing" game. I don't know if it was because I was a kid but
those are games bring back very fond memories.

------
eyuelt
Dangit. I was really looking forward to Mickey and Goofy's epic light saber
battle with Kermit and Sith Lady Piggy in "Disney's Magical House of Star
Wars: Attack of the Muppets"

------
_pmf_
They should sell to EA, which is worse than death for a studio.

------
kevindication
I guess this explains why their booth was empty at PyCon this year.

(Though I think they may have had an empty booth at previous PyCons...)

------
nachteilig
I guess I'm not surprised, but I am pretty sad.

I spent a lot of time in Lucasarts games as a kid. Fond memories. Thanks,
Lucasart.

------
neya
Sigh, I still remember Lucas arts from the days of Grim Fandango. This is
obviously sad news :'(

------
janesvilleseo
The question is, who is going to be picking up the rights to produce the next
Star Wars Games?

~~~
ctdonath
Perhaps the more interesting question is, who is going to be picking up all
this creative talent looking for paychecks?

------
codereflection
While I understand, this still makes me sad.

~~~
opyate
Same here. I had to look twice to see if this wasn't an April 1st post.

