Disney shuts down LucasArts
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Not expected, but not really surprising either.
"We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."
What better way to show your appreciation than to lay everybody off? Pretty sure there won't be any golden watches passed out either. I hate to be the one to say it, but if Walt or Roy were around they would probably be very questioning of this licensing model. Disney was supposed to be a place where magic was invented, not some last chance clearinghouse for the world's big properties.
The best thing I can say is that it started the careers of a bunch of people who deserve to work outside of a tall shadow, but I guess LucasArts (and Disney) won't be casting much of a shadow in this space anymore.
Wow, Disney is treating the Lucas brand stuff much different than they did the Marvel stuff in terms of cleaning house.
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"
LucasArts hasn't been great since they stopped making adventure games, everyone involved with those games left to work with other companies ages ago.
Oh shit. While I can't say I care about Star Wars games (or anything Star Wars), my fiance and I know a guy who works for LucasArts. If everybody is getting laid off, I assume he's been canned too. This is really sad.I hate hearing about mass layoffs.
The layoffs are worst thing about this. 150 people...
Also now I want to play the Monkey Island games all of a sudden.
Another behemoth from the good ol' days bites the dust eh? I'm surprised they've lasted this long.
Most of the Star Wars games for the past decade haven't been great. Double fine is doing great, on the other hand...
I'm not sure which is worst, the fact that 1313 will never see the light of day or the fact that Star Wars: Kinect is now the very last Lucasarts game.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
Originally Posted by THE 1 2 P
1313 must not have been very far along in development, or must have been having some other problems for them to totally just scrap it. It's a shame, because I was hoping this was going to be a big e3 game and would actually come out this November for both the PS4 and Infinity.
To be honest, I won't cry for 1313, as I really didn't understand the appeal of it. Frankly it just sounded like a way for them to get the concepts of the failed TV Live Action series to fans, but that too had a terrible concept. I definitely hate that LucasArts is gone, but they've not made much of anything in years, and the cancellation of the 360/PS3 Staff of Kings was the last straw for me. I imagine Disney felt it was a better idea to just can everything, because again if you look at the last 6 or 7 years the company has had a bad track record at producing games on budget.
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Creating Monopolies is the trend these days
Buy every company you can possibly buy out and then when your unable to man all of it... Start shutting it down
EA is one of the innovators of this trend of business practice in general.
No one cares about history or loyal fans of a company or franchise. If they don't make a quota to fill fat deep pockets higher up employees like ceo and company vp and such. Then it goes down the tubes.
I think personally if walt disney was still alive he would probably have a stoke seeing what has happened to his company.
Last edited by Collector_Gaming; 04-03-2013 at 08:55 PM.
In the fall of 1991 I was employed by LucasFilm Games as a gametester. I did work on two games: "Defenders of Dynatron City" (NES) and "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (The Action Game) (C64, Amiga, PC - and credited within the game manual). It was a temp position and I was let go in early 1992 as these projects wound down. I tried to return to them but was unsuccessful. I left for Colorado in 1993 and haven't been back to California since. After being interviewed by Kotaku about three years ago (because of my GameFAQs work) I realized that I may be able to utilize my guides as a way to maybe return to the gaming industry. Although I have sent resumes to various companies my long term goal was to return to LucasArts Games.
As you can imagine, today's news has left me deeply saddened and gutted. I understand what has happened the last few years and the possible long term benefits to this new model but this doesn't make me any less hurt. I don't know if any of these potential projects will head east to Austin. I also don't know if I should try to focus on Disney Interactive, a company I hadn't paid much attention to. Right now I am throughly bummed and the cold, gray skies outside my window perfectly match my dour mood.
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "save us!"......and I'll look down, and whisper "no."
A little bummed, as I thought 1313 had promise. But as mentioned, there must have been other issues if it was shut down this far into development.
I'm not sure the reasoning behind either of these statements. Both men were shrewd businessmen and the Walt Disney Company has always been about making money. As creative as they were, both were humans with plenty of faults, even (maybe especially) in business practices.
Doesn't everyone important who worked at Lucasarts work at Telltale games or Doublefine now?
Maybe Disney will licence Monkey Island ...
Edit: to doublefine. Telltale's games weren't point and clicky enough!
Highly. Highly. Unlikely. I think they'll just throw everything that isn't Star Wars into the Disney vault now.
Well, at least we have Raven Software... they released the source code for Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast yesterday. I already grabbed it in case Disney demands a takedown.
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For the most part, I think a few people aren't with those companies though. At least Ron Gilbert announced last month he's moving on from Double Fine so who knows what's next for him, he's only been there for about 2 years so plenty of the important people keep moving around.
To compete with their own Pirates of the Caribbean franchise....
I doubt it's going to happen.
I can dream damnit! I would kill for a proper monkey island game.
So they'll come out every other year then? :P
The only thing that i recall disney ever doing shady was buying out that land in florida to make disney world at such a cheap price because they thought there was no way he could do anything with it (at the time it was a complete swamp land).
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