As a Star Wars nut, the news of the closing of Lucas Art’s internal game development branch initially made me rather sad. Most gamers remember Lucas Arts as being kind of like the Pixar equivalent to the gaming world. Every game they made throughout my childhood was fantastic.
Lately Lucas Arts has failed across the board to produce anything of any quality. The same company that held the rights to such amazing titles as "Grim Fandango" and "Rogue Squadron" was busying itself making Star Wars dance simulators.
The closest thing to a shred of hope Lucas Arts had left was their now defunct project known as "Star Wars: 1313." Even 1313 had every sliver of quality sucked out of it over its long development, until it seemed to be nothing more than a boring corridor shooter with Star Wars aesthetics.
Actually, the more I sit and think about it, the more I’m convinced that the closing of Lucas Arts is probably one of the best things to happen that company’s intellectual property.
At one point in history, Lucas Arts was at the forefront of gaming innovation. From original intellectual property, such as "Grim Fandango" and the Monkey Island series, to "Star Wars: Tie Fighter," Lucas Arts constantly redefined genres and took important risks. Recently, this trend towards pushing the envelope has pretty much died.
However, for anyone who has held out hope for the reboot of some of Lucas Art’s forgotten treasures — please, Disney, make "Tie Fighter 2," you’re my only hope —the closing of Lucas Arts is probably the best chance we had.
The reason Lucas Arts was so amazing in the past was that it was willing to take risks to make the games unlike anything else. If you go back and play some of the Star Wars games from the end of the Nintendo 64 era, you might notice that they are still exceedingly play-able.
Lucas Arts stopped taking risks and instead pandered to the lowest common denominator. The same thing that happened to Lucas Arts is what people hate about Electronic Arts: They just got boring and greedy.
Now that Lucas Arts intellectual property can be licensed out to third-party developers, the risks needed to make a great game are taken by the developers who are now allowed to take them.
Maybe Tim Schaffer can start making more "Grim Fandango" games.
Disney may be a giant and greedy megacorporation, but it is not stupid. It knows better than to let the massive fan support toward Lucas Arts go to waste, but it wasn't going to take all the financial risks required to do it itself.
