Disney is just greedy. That what milks all thing is the IPS. The StarWars are licensed by Lucas. So, of course. Disney aren't interested. They are always after LucasFilm for years. That is basically why Disney bought the Lucas. Unforunately, Disney don't care about games. Take a look in past- Disney bought Pixar. They are in producing of Finding Dory, seriously? That is really lame. I am really scared how it turned out. Pixar is well known for really great computer graphics. Also, Disney bought Marvel some years ago. Disney only really cares about movies, that's it.
Bleh, this game industry really need a huge facelift and farewell LucasArts. I cant believe you guys are just gone just like this.
Careful now. Disney were responsible for Spectrobes, Turok and Pure in recent years. Most of their games are however tie-ins with their other franchises however.
Take a look in past- Disney bought Pixar. They are in producing of Finding Dory, seriously? That is really lame.
Disney's handling of Pixar was always very shady. They commissioned Toy Story 2 under their direction, but it was turning out shit and was going to be canned until Pixar execs took control and remedied the project. It was around this time that an agreement was made that Disney would not produce any sequels without direct Pixar involvement. Disney reneged on this deal and went on to work on Toy Story 3 anyway. The project was once again a disaster and was canned. It was later saved again by Pixar execs taking control and reworking the project.
Disney took over in 2006; before this the only sequel produced was Toy Story 2, and that was only after the failed Disney commission was rescued.
Toy Story 3, Cars 2, Planes (Cars spinoff), Monster's University and Finding Dory have all been spawned since then and there's rumours of Toy Story 4. Pixar are still working on original films too though - Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Brave and The Good Dinosaur exist to balance the horrific sequelitis out a bit.
As shitty as this all is, am I the only one thinking "Maybe we'll see some of the old-school designers out there pick up their old titles to run with"? I know it's a snowball's chance in hell, but it'd be nice.
I think the really sad thing out of all this is 1313 not getting released. Good game or bad, it still looked incredible.
That's all Disney is, a collection of IP's. They never create anything, they just buy everyone else out and exploit the public domain. They are the very definition of rent-seekers.
Or publishers, as it were.
EDIT: Probably should read the links I post =/
Anyway, best of luck to the folks who've been displaced by this business. For the rest of us, I guess there's the potential for the resurrection of some dormant IPs and new directions for others that have been mishandled in the past.
It's not that Disney doesn't care, it's just that Disney pretty much hinted at anything that starts collapsing will be to avoided on any kind of financial loss level, hence canning it, and with Epic Mickey being the forefront of the failures, I'm pretty sure at this point it's better for them to IP-lease their games instead of making them inhouse (they passively hinted at this, although no one is sure if they mean it).
Kinda like what Nintendo did with GoldenEye on the N64, at one point they stopped paying Rare because they deemed the game to be a 'disaster', but with the original studio (Rare) still paying it employees money, they finished the product and still published it under Nintendo.
So yeah, nothing really new here, shitty deals that you're tied with, but nothing new for many Vets who worked under Disney or Rare at this point.
Also, Disney is pretty strict, they pretty much a policy of "Anything you make under our time, belongs to us", even if you as much as tell your friend in your house that you're thinking of making a pet-project game, Disney automatically owns the right to that, this is one of the reasons you might see people to work for Disney try and NOT show off their work too much, or talk about, or even work under aliases, or hell, in a few cases, actually put up their works during 'contract renewal', so they essentially void Disney's 'it's mine' policy.
There was a case were an Disney employee was being sued or something at one point? I only heard about it, but I think it was about Tron or something.
They also are rumored to try and sometimes 'fail' projects, and try and write them off as cost in taxes, kinda like what Uwe Boll does with his movies in Germany, where success equates to 90%+ profit for them and the Gov't doesn't take cuts from you.
With all of that out of the way on how nasty they can be (and mind you, they can be REAL nasty), I think it's unfair to throw alot of the more moot points at them, read up some articles on how Disney operates with their employee's (be it park, or movies, or hell, even games) and you will see with high profile background, comes higher costs, not to mention the money needed for leases and other 'stuff' globally, especially with their 'child' branches that they own.
Kinda like how the millions of shirt brands out there are actually owned by only a few companies, or sporting equipment.
Also, I'm not sure saying "Oh noes, they made a new Finding Nemo sequel is lame" is the proper argument against all of this, considered everything...you know, EVERYTHING ELSE, they do which is pretty cunty is more important?
Billions they're making, while all fine and dandy, aren't exactly being thrown around willy nilly and they don't want to, simple as that, if something happens to any of their 'child' branches, try to saving will easily cost them alot, don't forget that Disney is a global franchise, which is both a blessing and a curse for many companies.
Yeah, sure, the top dogs could skip a year or two of salaries and this would solve many issues, but c'mon now, that's wishful thinking, who's going to fill up their garages with new cars? /s
By the way, I don't approve of Disney as a company, they're dicks especially with licensed music and scripts they buy and stop it from coming to public domain or renew IP ownsership all the way to 100 years, but being the Monolith that they are, it's going to be very hard to change the way they function at this point.
Sorry for any mistaken points I made have made, hopefully you will get the gist about Disney and how much of a catch 22 company they are.
Goodluck to those affected, I only hope you guys can show off your awesome stuff you made over the years, that's the only real issue I'm worried about since that can make job-hunting a major pain in the butt with Disney
LucasArts isn't gone. I'm not sure if someone has said this, but Disney has switched the way they work. Instead of development they are now licensing model. They fired a good amount of people, but the company itself is still running. It is just running completely differently. Which is somewhat good and gives the chance for others to develop some Star Wars games. Hopefully not Telltale Games though...
i was really upset to hear this. it always sucks when these kinds of things happen. on the bright side, we're hiring at sledgehammer, and we're not too far from lucas.
if anything, they should be opening more studios with the money they have piled up.
As someone who is interested in economics as well as video game creation I have to say I think you're misunderstanding what that means. Disney now will have enough venture capitol to fund a lot more games and a lot more projects. LucasArts gives them the IP to make something that isn't the old run of the mill either. If anything we're going to see more and better quality games come from the money. After seeing how well they took care of Marvel I'm not even worried.
As far as the people working at LucasArts goes I think losing a job is up there with divorce and losing a loved one as one of the most stressful things that can happen and everyone in the Industry hopes that the good can find jobs. Sure was a lot of talent in there too and as I look at all my xbox games I kinda hope the good people get to work on that sort of magic again.
As someone who is interested in economics as well as video game creation I have to say I think you're misunderstanding what that means. Disney now will have enough venture capitol to fund a lot more games and a lot more projects. LucasArts gives them the IP to make something that isn't the old run of the mill either. If anything we're going to see more and better quality games come from the money. After seeing how well they took care of Marvel I'm not even worried.
sorry but i am too cynical to believe that given the industry trends of the last 4-6 years.
from the perspective of a middle class developer, the best use of that pile of cash would be to invest it in the studio instead of firing everyone in hopes of building another team from scratch. it takes lot of man power and money to build a good dev team. so it makes no sense to let go of that team only to "fund" more projects, except to make short term profit.
closing the studio would only make sense to the high stake holders of the company who would make millions in short term by cutting the cost.
after those executives make the millions they will likely leave Disney and go to another company to fire more people for some more "consolidation" and make more millions and it goes on like that.
sorry but i am too cynical to believe that given the industry trends of the last 4-6 years.
from the perspective of a middle class developer, the best use of that pile of cash would be to invest it in the studio instead of firing everyone in hopes of building another team from scratch. it takes lot of man power and money to build a good dev team. so it makes no sense to let go of that team only to "fund" more projects, except to make short term profit.
closing the studio would only make sense to the high stake holders of the company who would make millions in short term by cutting the cost.
after those executives make the millions they will likely leave Disney and go to another company to fire more people for some more "consolidation" and make more millions and it goes on like that.
They aren't making any money by stopping production, instead they are just not spending it. I agree that the industry needs more insiders being executives but the market has a tendency to weed out people that make bad decisions. Disney's profits have been huge but so have their risk lately. They have been putting hundreds of millions into movies, buying up ips and expanding nearly every single thing they own. If Disney didn't employ more people they wouldn't be registering these profits. LucasArts was a bit burdened apparently and if they thought they could salvage it they would have.
I think it would be better to be grumpy at the executives that kept making the bad decisions at LucasArts these past umpteen years.
I can't be pessimestic about this though. It sucks for the people that just got laid off but there will be a great deal of good that comes from this and an improved (perhaps even larger) studio will employ just as many that were laid off.
sorry but i am too cynical to believe that given the industry trends of the last 4-6 years.
from the perspective of a middle class developer, the best use of that pile of cash would be to invest it in the studio instead of firing everyone in hopes of building another team from scratch. it takes lot of man power and money to build a good dev team. so it makes no sense to let go of that team only to "fund" more projects, except to make short term profit.
This is what they're planning to do, isn't it? Shutting down development department and focus on publishing?
Good example would be KOTOR, one of the best SW games, which was developed by Bioware and published by Lucasarts.
I am pretty sure Disney would have had to lay everybody off at Lucasarts anyway to fix it. Letting a giant studio bleed money by taking years and years just to release 1 title is not healthy.
I wish Disney would keep a small crew to work like an indie studio with tons of resources.
i hope you are right about all of that but keep in mind that in corporate world a "bad decision" is anything that decreases their pile of cash and likewise a good decision is anything that increases their pile of cash.
i just think one has to be extremely naive to believe that closing the studio leads to zero financial gain for the CEOs.
i would bet that they would make substantially more bonuses due to the costs there were able to cut.
what ever it takes to make more money and buy more yachts.
it all boils down to making more money, not more products.
i hope you are right about all of that but keep in mind that in corporate world a "bad decision" is anything that decreases their pile of cash and likewise a good decision is anything that increases their pile of cash.
i just think one has to be extremely naive to believe that closing the studio leads to zero financial gain for the CEOs.
i would bet that they would make substantially more bonuses due to the costs there were able to cut.
what ever it takes to make more money and buy more yachts.
it all boils down to making more money, not more products.
But the business is run buy a board of trustees answerable to their shareholders so if Disney makes bad mistakes they will go down too.
Mstankow: I thought KOTOR was brilliant just like I love it when new companys get to tackle the Warhammer IP. Large franchises that are put into the hands of a community that loves them blossom. Its why I think Skyrim is doing so good. I think Disney won't make it opensource but giving the ip to a newer studio that as obsessed with it as THQ is with 40k would do wonders for the franchise.
He does and under is watch some really good stuff has happened for them. But if he were to do bad stuff like a few of the CEO of the past he would get replaced for sure.
But the business is run buy a board of trustees answerable to their shareholders so if Disney makes bad mistakes they will go down too.
yes, and how exactly is that a bad thing for any of them ?
it would only suck for the actual developers, not the executives.
if Disney closes completely then that would not be bad at all for the top executives. they will have enough money to feed 5 generations of their family.
if it were up to the top execs, they would bankrupt Disney right now and sell it off in chunks just like THQ.
LucasArts isn't gone. I'm not sure if someone has said this, but Disney has switched the way they work. Instead of development they are now licensing model. They fired a good amount of people, but the company itself is still running. It is just running completely differently. Which is somewhat good and gives the chance for others to develop some Star Wars games. Hopefully not Telltale Games though...
what's with the dis on Telltale? The Lucasarts everyone remembers and loves is actually Doublefine, Telltale and the other companies that where formed by ex-Lucasarts devs after the suits decided to give up on adventure games.
LucasArts isn't gone. I'm not sure if someone has said this, but Disney has switched the way they work. Instead of development they are now licensing model. They fired a good amount of people, but the company itself is still running. It is just running completely differently. Which is somewhat good and gives the chance for others to develop some Star Wars games. Hopefully not Telltale Games though...
Thats not good. There just going for the sell their ip route. So now if you want to make a Star Wars game or any of the other million ips that they own. You have to pay them an up front cost and probably a share of the profits.
Theres rumours about the Star Wars MMO with the amount Bioware had to pay for that and development costs they supposedly still havent made money.
You have to pay for the IP and all the development, you couldnt do it unless you were a large publisher and why would you do it at all now(and there are fewer publishers than their were a couple of years ago). Unless perhaps the ip is a guaranteed money maker. So can slap together any old cheap crap and sell it.
All this is, as has been mentioned, is rent seeking behaviour. Its not good for the economy or anyone apart from Disney.
i hope you are right about all of that but keep in mind that in corporate world a "bad decision" is anything that decreases their pile of cash and likewise a good decision is anything that increases their pile of cash.
i just think one has to be extremely naive to believe that closing the studio leads to zero financial gain for the CEOs.
i would bet that they would make substantially more bonuses due to the costs there were able to cut.
what ever it takes to make more money and buy more yachts.
it all boils down to making more money, not more products.
Very true. This is also why often they put options on their stock going down right before they do massive layoffs. And guess who makes money then?!
“We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts. As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with."
1) Wow.
2) Those were some of my favorite star wars games. The mod community was pretty huge way back when, might be time to get the band back together ha... umm on second thought no.
3) Can they legally do that? I guess they can...
1313 was pretty underwhelming for me when they released the initial video but I would really have liked to have seen the Boba Fett version; might have been like a Prey 2 that we would actually get! Really hope Prey 2 still comes out...
"The move comes as Lucasfilm prepares for its next era, as it ramps up for what will be the busiest era of film and television production in its history."
That article is awesome
So we are getting rid of everyone as we ramp up in anticipation for the largest entertainment boom ever!
I love that it's more cost effective to lay off EVERYONE than to keep them on for a month or two before production ramps up again. Why? Because that would be 2 mos of money wasted away even though there would be an entire team at the ready at the drop of a hat when things start up again. Also, it's more cost effective to gradually find 'the right people' again and tell new hires that there is no time for production because they are understaffed so they better get to it and get to it fast. I can understand the need to not fully staff a place if its a smaller studio operation, but when a company makes a shitzillion dollars it's hard to believe they are going to bleed out if they float people for a while.
1) Wow.
2) Those were some of my favorite star wars games. The mod community was pretty huge way back when, might be time to get the band back together ha... umm on second thought no.
3) Can they legally do that? I guess they can...
1)
2) The modding community right now is just kids doing recolors
3) Yeah, though if someone wants to do a game off of it they'd have to do it from scratch, and avoid all likenesses and trademarked stuff (maybe even using names like schwingblades, shaftpoles or something). Fortunately the script system it used in the original game has all those stormtroopers and npcs as part of the copyrighted data so that's not included in the source code release.
My biggest question about it - the MP3 playback?
"The move comes as Lucasfilm prepares for its next era, as it ramps up for what will be the busiest era of film and television production in its history."
That's the problem, they don't want to make video games
what's with the dis on Telltale? The Lucasarts everyone remembers and loves is actually Doublefine, Telltale and the other companies that where formed by ex-Lucasarts devs after the suits decided to give up on adventure games.
Pretty much what you said, all the 'old school' peeps had long moved away from the helm and into other pastures.
Don't forget that LucasArts also hasn't produced any 'critically' acclaimed games in a while, with most of the them coming after 2002, being co-worked projects, like Angry Birds Star Wars, Star Wars Kinect, etc.
At that point, from a business perspective, you might as well all fold out, if half of the work that is being done, is already being done from a different company. I'm honestly surprised that Lucas kept the 'bleeding' branch open for 10 years as many call it, I guess Disney, not really being all that much into inhouse game solutions, shutting them down isn't a surprise with the past events, they're pretty brutal like that.
I'm sure there will be a bunch of Star Wars games coming out, but will they be any better than tie-ins for the movies and TV shows? The games that accompany Disney's current franchises - Marvel, Pixar movies etc. - all tend to be uninspired cash-ins as far as I'm aware. Hoping I'm wrong, but it seems like games are more of a secondary concern for them.
That's the problem, they don't want to make video games
Wut? My post was in direct response to that article that Renaud posted which talks about letting go of ILM employees despite the projected surge in upcoming film and tv releases. I wasn't referring to Lucasarts at all...
LucasArts hadn't produced a good game in a while, the best games with the lucasarts logo on them were games that WERE NOT made in house, that's the direction things are going back to. Back when we had star wars games that could be modified.
Also since LA is gone it let Raven release the source code to 2 of probably the best SW games made, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.
Sucks I won't see their logo on games anymore but I don't want anymore linear games that have no support for modding like the TFU games.
This is what happens when a studio is not profitable, RIP. I have not seen a game from lucas in years!. The last game i played with a lucas logo, was on a pentium 200mhz...
While I'm sad to see them go I can honestly see why Disney did what they did. What was the last thing that they actually developed? The Force Unleashed 1 & 2 so 2010 and 2008 and then after that we go to 2005. Most of the games they developed recently also haven't gotten excellent reviews. I also honestly didn't think 1313 from begin with was going to actually make it out.
I'm NOT saying this isn't sad. I'm just saying I see where Disney is coming from.
Replies
Bleh, this game industry really need a huge facelift and farewell LucasArts.
Careful now. Disney were responsible for Spectrobes, Turok and Pure in recent years. Most of their games are however tie-ins with their other franchises however.
Disney's handling of Pixar was always very shady. They commissioned Toy Story 2 under their direction, but it was turning out shit and was going to be canned until Pixar execs took control and remedied the project. It was around this time that an agreement was made that Disney would not produce any sequels without direct Pixar involvement. Disney reneged on this deal and went on to work on Toy Story 3 anyway. The project was once again a disaster and was canned. It was later saved again by Pixar execs taking control and reworking the project.
Disney took over in 2006; before this the only sequel produced was Toy Story 2, and that was only after the failed Disney commission was rescued.
Toy Story 3, Cars 2, Planes (Cars spinoff), Monster's University and Finding Dory have all been spawned since then and there's rumours of Toy Story 4. Pixar are still working on original films too though - Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Brave and The Good Dinosaur exist to balance the horrific sequelitis out a bit.
I think the really sad thing out of all this is 1313 not getting released. Good game or bad, it still looked incredible.
EDIT: Probably should read the links I post =/
Anyway, best of luck to the folks who've been displaced by this business. For the rest of us, I guess there's the potential for the resurrection of some dormant IPs and new directions for others that have been mishandled in the past.
Kinda like what Nintendo did with GoldenEye on the N64, at one point they stopped paying Rare because they deemed the game to be a 'disaster', but with the original studio (Rare) still paying it employees money, they finished the product and still published it under Nintendo.
So yeah, nothing really new here, shitty deals that you're tied with, but nothing new for many Vets who worked under Disney or Rare at this point.
Also, Disney is pretty strict, they pretty much a policy of "Anything you make under our time, belongs to us", even if you as much as tell your friend in your house that you're thinking of making a pet-project game, Disney automatically owns the right to that, this is one of the reasons you might see people to work for Disney try and NOT show off their work too much, or talk about, or even work under aliases, or hell, in a few cases, actually put up their works during 'contract renewal', so they essentially void Disney's 'it's mine' policy.
There was a case were an Disney employee was being sued or something at one point? I only heard about it, but I think it was about Tron or something.
They also are rumored to try and sometimes 'fail' projects, and try and write them off as cost in taxes, kinda like what Uwe Boll does with his movies in Germany, where success equates to 90%+ profit for them and the Gov't doesn't take cuts from you.
With all of that out of the way on how nasty they can be (and mind you, they can be REAL nasty), I think it's unfair to throw alot of the more moot points at them, read up some articles on how Disney operates with their employee's (be it park, or movies, or hell, even games) and you will see with high profile background, comes higher costs, not to mention the money needed for leases and other 'stuff' globally, especially with their 'child' branches that they own.
Kinda like how the millions of shirt brands out there are actually owned by only a few companies, or sporting equipment.
Also, I'm not sure saying "Oh noes, they made a new Finding Nemo sequel is lame" is the proper argument against all of this, considered everything...you know, EVERYTHING ELSE, they do which is pretty cunty is more important?
Billions they're making, while all fine and dandy, aren't exactly being thrown around willy nilly and they don't want to, simple as that, if something happens to any of their 'child' branches, try to saving will easily cost them alot, don't forget that Disney is a global franchise, which is both a blessing and a curse for many companies.
Yeah, sure, the top dogs could skip a year or two of salaries and this would solve many issues, but c'mon now, that's wishful thinking, who's going to fill up their garages with new cars? /s
By the way, I don't approve of Disney as a company, they're dicks especially with licensed music and scripts they buy and stop it from coming to public domain or renew IP ownsership all the way to 100 years, but being the Monolith that they are, it's going to be very hard to change the way they function at this point.
Sorry for any mistaken points I made have made, hopefully you will get the gist about Disney and how much of a catch 22 company they are.
Goodluck to those affected, I only hope you guys can show off your awesome stuff you made over the years, that's the only real issue I'm worried about since that can make job-hunting a major pain in the butt with Disney
theres been no updates for 1313 for a long time
That's about it. Also, didn't lucasfilm animation layoff a lot of people a couple of weeks ago too?
I heard Lucasfilm and ILM Tech have gone through a reorganization and lost a couple people too.
Just give the Indiana Jones license to Naughty Dog or Eidos FFS!
http://www.linkedin.com/company/sledgehammer-games/careers?trk=top_nav_careers
hope everyone affected by this is able to land on their feet
As someone who is interested in economics as well as video game creation I have to say I think you're misunderstanding what that means. Disney now will have enough venture capitol to fund a lot more games and a lot more projects. LucasArts gives them the IP to make something that isn't the old run of the mill either. If anything we're going to see more and better quality games come from the money. After seeing how well they took care of Marvel I'm not even worried.
As far as the people working at LucasArts goes I think losing a job is up there with divorce and losing a loved one as one of the most stressful things that can happen and everyone in the Industry hopes that the good can find jobs. Sure was a lot of talent in there too and as I look at all my xbox games I kinda hope the good people get to work on that sort of magic again.
sorry but i am too cynical to believe that given the industry trends of the last 4-6 years.
from the perspective of a middle class developer, the best use of that pile of cash would be to invest it in the studio instead of firing everyone in hopes of building another team from scratch. it takes lot of man power and money to build a good dev team. so it makes no sense to let go of that team only to "fund" more projects, except to make short term profit.
closing the studio would only make sense to the high stake holders of the company who would make millions in short term by cutting the cost.
after those executives make the millions they will likely leave Disney and go to another company to fire more people for some more "consolidation" and make more millions and it goes on like that.
They aren't making any money by stopping production, instead they are just not spending it. I agree that the industry needs more insiders being executives but the market has a tendency to weed out people that make bad decisions. Disney's profits have been huge but so have their risk lately. They have been putting hundreds of millions into movies, buying up ips and expanding nearly every single thing they own. If Disney didn't employ more people they wouldn't be registering these profits. LucasArts was a bit burdened apparently and if they thought they could salvage it they would have.
I think it would be better to be grumpy at the executives that kept making the bad decisions at LucasArts these past umpteen years.
I can't be pessimestic about this though. It sucks for the people that just got laid off but there will be a great deal of good that comes from this and an improved (perhaps even larger) studio will employ just as many that were laid off.
This is what they're planning to do, isn't it? Shutting down development department and focus on publishing?
Good example would be KOTOR, one of the best SW games, which was developed by Bioware and published by Lucasarts.
I wish Disney would keep a small crew to work like an indie studio with tons of resources.
i just think one has to be extremely naive to believe that closing the studio leads to zero financial gain for the CEOs.
i would bet that they would make substantially more bonuses due to the costs there were able to cut.
what ever it takes to make more money and buy more yachts.
it all boils down to making more money, not more products.
Mstankow: I thought KOTOR was brilliant just like I love it when new companys get to tackle the Warhammer IP. Large franchises that are put into the hands of a community that loves them blossom. Its why I think Skyrim is doing so good. I think Disney won't make it opensource but giving the ip to a newer studio that as obsessed with it as THQ is with 40k would do wonders for the franchise.
yes, and how exactly is that a bad thing for any of them ?
it would only suck for the actual developers, not the executives.
if Disney closes completely then that would not be bad at all for the top executives. they will have enough money to feed 5 generations of their family.
if it were up to the top execs, they would bankrupt Disney right now and sell it off in chunks just like THQ.
this is the new corporate trend...
what's with the dis on Telltale? The Lucasarts everyone remembers and loves is actually Doublefine, Telltale and the other companies that where formed by ex-Lucasarts devs after the suits decided to give up on adventure games.
I grew up with the Lucasarts adventures en Star Wars games. They, and Westwood Studios games, motivated me to pursue a career in games.
To those affected that might see this:
Guerrilla Games is hiring :
http://www.guerrilla-games.com/jobs
Thats not good. There just going for the sell their ip route. So now if you want to make a Star Wars game or any of the other million ips that they own. You have to pay them an up front cost and probably a share of the profits.
Theres rumours about the Star Wars MMO with the amount Bioware had to pay for that and development costs they supposedly still havent made money.
You have to pay for the IP and all the development, you couldnt do it unless you were a large publisher and why would you do it at all now(and there are fewer publishers than their were a couple of years ago). Unless perhaps the ip is a guaranteed money maker. So can slap together any old cheap crap and sell it.
All this is, as has been mentioned, is rent seeking behaviour. Its not good for the economy or anyone apart from Disney.
Very true. This is also why often they put options on their stock going down right before they do massive layoffs. And guess who makes money then?!
“We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts. As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with."
2) Those were some of my favorite star wars games. The mod community was pretty huge way back when, might be time to get the band back together ha... umm on second thought no.
3) Can they legally do that? I guess they can...
Grim Fandango was a favourite of mine.
Hope you all land on your feet.
http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/lucasarts-shutdown-triggers-layoffs-at-ilm-1200332765/
That article is awesome
So we are getting rid of everyone as we ramp up in anticipation for the largest entertainment boom ever!
I love that it's more cost effective to lay off EVERYONE than to keep them on for a month or two before production ramps up again. Why? Because that would be 2 mos of money wasted away even though there would be an entire team at the ready at the drop of a hat when things start up again. Also, it's more cost effective to gradually find 'the right people' again and tell new hires that there is no time for production because they are understaffed so they better get to it and get to it fast. I can understand the need to not fully staff a place if its a smaller studio operation, but when a company makes a shitzillion dollars it's hard to believe they are going to bleed out if they float people for a while.
EDIT: I guess Google has uses for things other than porn..... http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/layoffs-in-singapore-after-dis/627382.html
1)
2) The modding community right now is just kids doing recolors
3) Yeah, though if someone wants to do a game off of it they'd have to do it from scratch, and avoid all likenesses and trademarked stuff (maybe even using names like schwingblades, shaftpoles or something). Fortunately the script system it used in the original game has all those stormtroopers and npcs as part of the copyrighted data so that's not included in the source code release.
My biggest question about it - the MP3 playback?
That's the problem, they don't want to make video games
Pretty much what you said, all the 'old school' peeps had long moved away from the helm and into other pastures.
Don't forget that LucasArts also hasn't produced any 'critically' acclaimed games in a while, with most of the them coming after 2002, being co-worked projects, like Angry Birds Star Wars, Star Wars Kinect, etc.
At that point, from a business perspective, you might as well all fold out, if half of the work that is being done, is already being done from a different company. I'm honestly surprised that Lucas kept the 'bleeding' branch open for 10 years as many call it, I guess Disney, not really being all that much into inhouse game solutions, shutting them down isn't a surprise with the past events, they're pretty brutal like that.
Also, if you want to learn just how truly screwed up the market is for top-shareholders and you're expected to function, here is a read, not directly related to Game Dev jobs mind you, but still: http://www.alternet.org/economy/fiduciary-duty-cheat-stock-market-super-star-jim-chanos-reveals-perverse-new-mindset?page=0%2C0&paging=off
Wut? My post was in direct response to that article that Renaud posted which talks about letting go of ILM employees despite the projected surge in upcoming film and tv releases. I wasn't referring to Lucasarts at all...
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Also since LA is gone it let Raven release the source code to 2 of probably the best SW games made, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.
Sucks I won't see their logo on games anymore but I don't want anymore linear games that have no support for modding like the TFU games.
I'm NOT saying this isn't sad. I'm just saying I see where Disney is coming from.