LucasArts Aims for #1

The New York Times has an interesting profile of LucasArts, the game development house attached to George Lucas' company. They discuss some challenges with being so closely associated with Star Wars, and detail their role in the Lucasfilm company as a whole. From the article: "[Ward's] most challenging days may be ahead. The videogame industry has been in the doldrums for months; video game sales are lagging as consumers wait to buy the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 3. And perhaps most important, Mr. Lucas has no plans to make any more 'Star Wars' movies. That means LucasArts will have to work that much harder to come up with ideas of its own. 'We are not the Star Wars game company,' said Micheline Chau, president of Lucasfilm. 'And Jim knows what he has to do.'"

Comments

'We are not the Star Wars company'

[Joehonkie]

But we'll kill a finished Sam & Max game in a second! They would do better to stop just releasing Star Wars games and little else if they want to change that perception. It's too bad most of their adventure gaming people have moved on to places like Telltale.

So give us adventures!

[BorgDrone]

If they want to be #1, give us back the good-old 2D cartoon-style humor filled adventure games.

I never liked any of the star-wars themed games, but the adventures were fantastic.

Re:So give us adventures!

[Spy der Mann]

I agree. I would love to see a sequel for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, or more monkey island games. 3D Action games get boring after a while.

A little off-topic, but I've realized one thing while playing Silent Hill 3: The textures are realistic, and the control is user-friendly. Why not make a detective game (Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot?) with that engine? It would rock if you could interrogate suspects and examine items, etc.

Anyway my point is, we need more story / plot / brain in today's games. The Indy graphic adventures contained all of these elements, and this is why they succeeded.

Original games?

[VGPowerlord]

How many original games has LucasArts had in the last three years? The only one I can think of was the one mentioned in the article, Mercenaries.

Everything else has been Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

LucasArts used to be known for its Adventure games, but under Mr. Ward's leadership, they flushed that down the toilet in favor of more Star Wars. They got such bad press from the Sam and Max 2 cancellation that they removed the Press Release from their site. LucasArts can claim that the genre is dead, but when companies like The Adventure Company continue to make money off of them, it would appear that LucasArts is wrong.

The question is, will LucasArts put its money where its mouth is, or simply continue to be the Star Wars company?