The Art of LucasArts

Gamasutra has a piece talking with Michael Rubin about his new book, Droidmaker. From the article: "GS: Why do you think George Lucas saw the importance of games so early, and why was he able to capitalize on it so relatively well? MR: I think he actually didn't see the importance early. He had to be convinced that a games effort wasn't going to be a distraction. Quickly though, he was able to integrate his personal interest with education and using technology to aid in education, with the research going on in the games group. Making video games was only one aspect of that groups' work."

Comments

Don't forget Battle over/of Britain

[SmallFurryCreature]

and Secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. THE ORIGINAL.

Of course by todays standard they are truly horrible and the flight and combat is a joke BUT at the time it was great. Shooting pixels at pixels. Sitting in a bomber with a bloody rocket after you are trying to fly under a bomber to use your upward firing missles. Great stuff.

Oh also a game that had a manual that not only told you about the game but also the history of the era you were fighting in and a whole chapter in SWOTL about the impact the various real strategies had. You could even follow them and see the effect. Like concentrating on bombing oil installations really worked!

X-wing was a nice game and all but it came with a couple of stencil sheets for a manual. Sigh. The beginning of the end. Soon we would have games that didn't even need a manual. Or PDF's.

I am sad now and must cuddle my F-16 Fighting Falcon 3.0 manual.