<Speculates wildly>

Damn.
I was really looking forward to "Star Wars Tycoon" and "Star Wars: Buy This You Sheep".
On the flipside, it sucks that people have to lose their jobs.
Except the assfaces that cancelled Sam n' Max 2.

Send your CVs to

Telltale Games
Double Fine
Autumn Moon Entertainment...

Well, sad as it is to say, I'm not entirely surprised. LucasArts have dug themselves into a bit of a hole. No matter how cheap it is to pull out another second-rate Star Wars clone, they'll not really gonna recoup their losses, and although an adventure game will be welcome and probably highly praised, its not gonna make the money LucasArts need.

I really can't see a way for them... who knows, they may even be going the way of Sierra soon.

Well, if they stopped pretending that they're cool because their name made them what they are today or what they were at some point in time, instead being cool because of the great people who worked there, like Grumpy, and all of those who have long left, then maybe they could get their act together.

Also, Star Wars. Do I need to say more? I like (old) Star Wars, but now days it's destroying every company that has Lucas tied to it.

Will LucasArts become just a name? Like Atari these days?

good.

Unfortunately, it just means that they found a way to handle developing Star Wars games by just farming it out to other companies.

For a number of years the best Star Wars games have been precisely those developed with the assistance of 3rd party developers (Raven, Bioware, Factor 5 etc).

In retrospect, none of the crap that happened at LEC starting with Salmon Rushdie ? or Simon Geoffrey or Jeffrey or whatever his name is ? leaving the company has made any sense at all. I would understand if someone from the publishing end came about and said, You know, people above have lowered a noose for us to use unless we cut our losses, or We believe creativity is overrated by you creative types, or Mike and I have made this bet, we want to see how good I could run LucasArts on crack 24-7, or something like that.

It is not even that the company committed hara-kiri at any single point in the past six months ? it is still slowly whittling at its own flesh with a pocketknife.

So everything's going according to plan then Herr Gilbert?

Outsourcing to Poland or Indonesia or something?  No surprise.  This industry is run by brain-dead bean counters.  Is it time to move to Indonesia?

I'm talking to my super secret inside source right now. Exactly thirty-one people were laid off. Only two projects survived, both Star Wars games: Republic Commando and Galaxies. The finishing touches are still being done on KOTOR 2, as well. KOTOR 3 has been axed for the time being, apparently it was being done internally. And at the meeting today, Jim Ward expressed a desire to revive the Indiana Jones franchise.

"Indiana Jones has not been exploited at all!" he said, according to my contact. "Men want to be him, and the women want him!"

Whatever you say, Jim.

The meeting also revealed that they'll be down to forty people by October. And that's all I've got.

Long-time fan, Ron, Monkey Island was my first PC game. I had nowhere else to post this, so here you go.

Intriguing...

What about the money made from Galaxies? That's providing a constant souce of revenue for LucasArts not only from the people buying it, but for the monthly payments. Surely they must have a bit of cash left over after wages, marketing, making the games, etc...

I doubt that game would be turning a profit yet. Hell, any spare money (hah!) would be funnelled straight back into tuning the existing game and developing Jump to Lightspeed.

Ron darling, seeing how you're a gaming billionairre, can you & Stemmle & Clarke buy the now utterly useless Sam & Max 2 code, please?

Or better yet, the Monkey Island rights.

I have a better idea and I say it often: Ron and Stemmle and Tim should go to Nevada and form a drag queen biker gang with Willie Nelson and Skeletor and Queen Mum!!!! That would be soooo awesome! But I repeat myself.

I take it this means the Planet Moon guys are gone as well?  They do good work, you know.  If only LucasArts hadn't rushed them on Armed & Dangerous.

Erm, what I really meant to say was, is PM still affiliated with LA, or did that relationship also get chucked?

Buy the rights to games eh?  They've obviously in need of cash.  I can chip in three dollars and change.

I've got a few Toonies around here somewhere.
That's at least like $1.50 to you Americans.

Planet Moon is doing a PSP game called Infected for Sony. I doubt they've been rolling in riches since Armed & Dangerous, but they're still there.

The LucasArts layoffs are sad, yes. Surprising, no. I wonder if even the last remaining dev people will get kicked out too when Republic Commando is done. (Probably yes.) I can only hope that more LucasArts-renegade Bay Area studios are established, and that they'll do well like Double Fine and not badly like Infinite Machine.

Mike Stemmle should team up with someone and make that marching band simulator he wanted to do.

This bodes poorly for the games soon to be released.  If you knew that a guillotine waited for you at the end of the line, how fast (and well) would you work.

> This bodes poorly for the games soon to be released

Well, the only in house game left (excluding the ongoing Galaxies) is Republic Commando, but yeah, I'd imagine that team are hardly wildly enthusiastic about completing it. :-\

Jim Ward, yesterday.

image

"they'll do well like Double Fine and not badly like Infinite Machine. "

well Infinite machine only lasted 3 years and laid off everyone and closed it doors since it hadn't finished dev. a new game idea and didn't have an other publisher

Double fine is still working on a game that's taking now over 4 years, sony dropped them....

That was Microsoft, not Sony... And they were picked up again by Majesco.

I'm pretty confident Psychonauts will see the light of day, and Double Fine will move on to other things.

They should seriously change their logo too. It's just too ironic now.

Someone: right, so Infinite Machine was doing badly in the end, just as I said. What's your point? :)

Although Double Fine seems to be taking ages with Psychonauts, at least it's still around, and has a publisher. They've also got 35 people employed. They could be much worse off, right?

I think Double Fine is doing double fine. Pun intended.

Not sure if anybody still cares, but Lucasarts officially announced it has layed off people and is currently undergoing "major restructuring".

Talk about the understatement of the decade . . .

That's a strange story. How LucasArts could even think they would be able to keep running with only "Star Wars inside"tm games? That's beyond my comprehension.

It is even funnier, that they pretty much axed every "brand" they had outside of star wars.
LA is a classical example of a gaming house built up by very creative people who were willing to take risk and the occasional problematik title with comes with it and being run down in the end by beancounters who were not willing to take any risks and killing off all the assets this company built up in its creative years.

Really Bad!
Wouldn´t it be possible to found a company with Tim and the Williams (Sierra) to do some Adventure-Games again? I think there would be a market for those!

I never really thought that I would not buy LucasArts Games anymore, but this is it... :-(

Soon they will be history. Its a shame!!

I agree it's a shame that LucasArts have come to this. I used to really, really love those guys. I mean, I would have bought a game just for the LucasArts logo, because you knew it was going to be great. Now it has the opposite effect.

But, uhm... Tim Schafer has already founded his own company, Double Fine Productions, and I'm not sure what Roberta and Ken Williams are up to nowadays... but that's thee most horrible match-up I can think of. I can only begin to imagine the evil born of that union.

Fandango Quest XIV: The Quest for the Stone.

A Williams and Schafer collaboration in which King Manny and his loyal friend, Sir Glottis, must go on an adventure through the land of Fa-La-La in search of the mystical Stone of Arcadia!

The Williams and Tim?  No.

Silly trivia for Somebody and Marek: microsoft was interested in Infinite Machine's proposed sam and max 3rd-person-platformy-game-with-adventurey-elements, but they passed because they "already had a game in that slot."

ô.O

everyone should band together and create an independant company..and make the sam and max sequel..all the fans are still here and we will support you...

Adamant Old Skool adventure gamers are the most reactionary, irrational bunch of wankers this side of the Vatican.

Well i've read somewhere an interview with Ken W. and he said even if he hadn't sell Sierra to Vivendi, he still wouldn't make more adventuregames, he had some other ideas he wanted to explore.

Ken Williams didn't sell Sierra to Vivendi. He sold it to Havas.

I still think its an almighty bugger that all that coding for S&M will go to waste... LucasArts won't even let other companies have it, cuz they'll profit from their foolish short-sightedness!

It just goes to show that LucasArts don't make games for the love of making them anymore.

Silly trivia for Somebody and Marek: microsoft was interested in Infinite Machine's proposed sam and max 3rd-person-platformy-game-with-adventurey-elements, but they passed because they "already had a game in that slot"

Psychonauts has indirectly murdered Sam n' Max.

Adamant Old Skool adventure gamers are the most reactionary, irrational bunch of wankers this side of the Vatican.

YES!

I still think its an almighty bugger that all that coding for S&M will go to waste... LucasArts won't even let other companies have it, cuz they'll profit from their foolish short-sightedness!

While I have been severely and consistently disappointed by LucasArts for years now, I actually heard that they shopped around to see if anybody else wanted to finish the project for them. I think. That's what I heard. I don't know if it's true. It's probably not.

This thread has gone down the toilet.

What? I thought LucasArts had made tons of money with superb games like Wrath Unleashed... (Nah, just joking). But don't worry, they'll make tons of money with the superb game Mercenaries... (still joking...)

Ron and Tim are gods.
Graphic Adventures forever.

Hmh, sad news for the people who lost their jobs.

Well, probably LA is forced in some time to sell the rights on MI to Telltale Games... :D Would be nice.
Yesterday I saw the S&M2 Trailer when it was developed by LA still. Those fools! How could they even think of to cancel it?

A few years ago, when being 12-16 years old, everyone in my class loved LA adventures. Also the not-geeks, of course. Remember playing S&M 1 on a 286er.. :D Took us half a day or so.

LA`s adventures symbolizing in some way a part of my childhood. (Noo, I also did have played with other kids outside those days - really) You know, it`s like the Star Wars movies... I was totally fascinated (mhm, don`t know the right english word, just multiplie "fascinated" by 10x or so).
And now the new movies? Well, episode 3 mhm uhm okaayyy. But I remember, when Episode I came in cinemas, I had tickets for the "premier" in our local cinema. I had a bad day so far, and this film left some bad feeling in me. In the evening I cried my eyes out - nearly. ;)

So what`s happening with LucasArts is the same as with LucasFilm. Though, last ones do have money.

It`s all going doooowwwwn. Check the radio charts, check your local record store (if there is anyone at least), check the movies, check music industry check pc technology... all going evil.. :(

Sorry for that depressing post. But I feel better now :)
Greets -Chris

PS:
Hey Ron, Thank you for MI!!! Sadly I don`t have a car for you. Anyone of us MI fans should get a quite good job and make much money (more billions or so). :D Then we would buy the rights on MI! Just need a lobby or so. ;)