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LucasArts Employees Hold Wake & Eulogy; Vader Still Roams
Dawn Kawamoto writes "LucasArts employees held a wake Friday night, days after Darth Vader Disney slayed their studio. Taking the high road, two LucasArts employees put together a eulogy that offers a retrospective on the culture, memories and accomplishments of the team. Most of us who've witnessed a blood bath at the workplace aren't as charitable. Darth Vader Disney is expected to strike again in the next two weeks at its studio and consumer product divisions."
"We have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter it further."
Make sure you've got some protection for the Epcot Center's thermal exhaust ports.
Am I the only one who is getting a login page on the last link?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
LucasArts shutting down is a significant and sad event, but adventure gamers should remember their history. Never forget Sierra Online's Chainsaw Monday.
so long suckers
Sources among those laid off say the packages were, indeed, generous.
...
LucasArts’ layoffs came just a week after the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which would have provided many of the casualties with a prime networking opportunity given the number of recruiters and managers in attendance. One former studio employee, however, said the company gave people time off to attend the event and provided passes.
If that's "Darth Vader Disney" then most folks who have been canned in the last few years have worked for "[insert former employer here] Nazis"
When most people get canned, you get called into a meeting room, told you are redundant, handed a pink slip, and then escorted to the door by rent a cops with any of your personal effects - if you were allowed to pack them.
Your severance is unemployment and what savings you have.
The CEO then gets a ten million dollar bonus for meeting performance targets - even if the company looses more money.
Gotta love double standards.
Is Disney really so evil for axing a studio that hasn't produced a decent game in a decade?
We all love lucas arts, but there has not too much coming out of that for a while now, and its a smart decision to trim the fat, no matter how great they once were.
I hate Disney tactics as much as the next guy, but I have to say, LucasArts was dead a long time ago. Disney just buried the rotting corpse.
[rant about /.'s non-command of editing]
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
When the Lucas is really at fault?
It's not like they had to sell out to Disney, it was in his best interests to. And the employees, well who cares, right?
Anybody who really cares about the memory of what ILM/Lucas* used to stand for should boycott what's left of them, and help support whatever new endeavors the ex-employees put forth.
As to you ex-employees: Learn from your mistakes and work for yourself, not some schmuck who'll sell you down a river as soon as it's convenient.
Sierra is another example of that.
For anyone who was wondering what Dice's real interest in Slashdot was, this seems to be it.
The first link goes to a "Dice News" story.
The second link goes to a Slashdot "Business Intelligence" story (remember, Business Intelligence is code for "someone paid us to put this up") that is a "Dice News" story by the same author as the first link.
Obviously Dice pushed the Slashdot editors to post this as a news item. So much for editorial independence from the parent company. The disappearance of LucasArts may be Slashdot-worthy news, but when Slashdot's parent company, Dice, is writing the story it looks like they just want lots of techies to think "techies are losing their jobs, it could happen to me, I should look and see what's out there."
What kind of a name is "Darth Vader Disney"? Obviously, it should be "Darth Disney".
I wonder if they wrote an article about TNG years ago talking about "Captain Kirk Picard".
Lets be honest... the existing people couldn't deliver. This was proven time and time again on the games they released. Hopefully someone will.
They failed to produce anything of value in the last few years, with the exception of Force Unleashed, but even the sequel was lack lustre.
One one side it can be hard to produce a radical new game/concept, when boxed into the SW franchise. That said they had exclusive access to a big market of SW fans. I really wished they'd release a new version of Tie Fighter/Xwing MMO.
Area51 - We are watching...
about 30 years ago. It was the most degrading job I have ever had. Management treated employees like crap. Day one job training consisted of the boss showing you your locker and uniform, telling you to keep it clean and never take it out of the park, and do things the "Disney way" or get the hell out because there are 10 people lined up outside to take your job.
What a shame to shutdown the source of so much fun! I see that they released a couple of the classic games open source, so perhaps some sort of good can come from that.
Who did what now?
With the exception of Tales of Monkey Island (Which I'm less sure about) all of the rest of those were sublicensees, which will remain. It was the LucasArts game development arm that was axed, not the licensing department. As someone else mentioned only the Force Unleashed games and a few other odds and ends came out of them in the past decade.
One thing I was curious about however, was if any game assets for other licensees came out of LA during that time, given that Star Wars Galaxies, TOR, and a few others were producing during that period, and might (or might not) have had assets produced by the LA art staff.
Nooo... Obbbaaammmaaa ....
Company which hasn't made anything of note in years shut down.
Seriously folks, LucasArts has made some of the greatest games I've ever played, but how long does that keep the lights on? It's not like the brand even has that much value anymore.
a friend of mine was always telling me I should get that job, because he thought it was the most magical place on earth and it must be wonderful working there.
Seriously the Cult of the Mouse is some scary shit. Makes Scientology look tame in comparison.
more money to be made by licensing the name.... without the hassle of development, marketing, distribution, support, or dealing with whiny workers.
Idiot. Worse. You are probaply a fly-over state, bible thumper redneck. How is your cousin?
Lucas sold out in 2012 because Disney gave him a butt load of cash. Don't kid yourself.
I apply at the place last week to be a programmer/designer. Next week, its shut down.
All they really needed was to make an Xwing vs TieFighter MMO, where you built up a fleet of ships by running missions, and your guild was your wingmen. It could have had staying power if done right.
God spoke to me
Now granted lucasarts had a lot of great stuff back in the day of the adventure titles, they had some great star wars games and a few other hits. But lets face facts, lucasarts has become nothing but a license whore for the past decade. All lucasarts has done for 10+ years of shitty titles based off star wars and that's it.
So yeah, hold a eulogy for the old lucasarts, but for all you fucks that have been there for the past decade you don't deserve dick because you haven't done anything but driven that company into the ground. Because if you did make good games you wouldn't have gotten fired so why in the hell do you deserve any recognition for doing a terrible job at making games?
Is self serving justification. "We sacrificied everything! We were so dedicated [sniff] it's not [sniff] [cry] FAAAIIIIRRR [sniff]"
.. it's pretty clear that LucasArts Studios has been on pump and dump for some years now. Thinking back, it's hard to recall a Star Wars game since X-Wing which has even come close to meeting expectations of the fans.
.. well, the bar was too high. If the staff aren't the people responsible, who are?
The studio had the greatest franchise in the history of science fiction and failed. If the employees don't hold themselves responsible, I can see why it's been closed. Considering the epic failure of Kinect Starwars and the near complete disappointment of TOR
And I don't think you can blame the fans for having too high expectations. If TOR was even remotely like a an open ended MMO, people would have been glued to it like flies on shit. But despite the that being the only requirement
I'd be the last person wanting to publicise my failure on a eulogy page, that's just flat out embarassing.
Storm troopers can't aim. Ever see star wars? Even the droids don't shoot straight.
Hell, the jedi are so bored they block shots that would actually miss them -- about a third the time. The force must be a magnet for laser blasters because everything other target gets less action.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
And he had to get that cash in 2012, before the tax increase. Without the massive new taxes in January 2013 (that most of the LucasArts employees probably supported) maybe he waits a few more years and LucasArts employees finish 1313.
Instead, their game got canceled and they're unemployed. Too bad for them. What goes around comes around.
Maybe one of these days we can stop using the government as a mechanism to steal from our neighbors.
shortcomings, TOR, KotOR1/2, JK2/JKA, and dozens of others WERE NOT LUCASARTS. They'd already gotten dumped from the lucrative games by the time that came around, and as someone else mentioned in a prior article's replies, they were handicapped by mismanagement with enough hubris to state that innovation and such wasn't important in the *PROSPECTIVE JOB INTERVIEWS*. IE they were losing their best and brightest from inside, and not regaining any from outside due to MANAGEMENT, not due to the staff themselves being terrible (although the fact that any of them stayed long enough to be laid off makes you wonder....)
You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness.
Instead of all the pictures... I'd have shown the first game - Rescue On Fractalus, and had the Jaggi smash the cockpit window.
That would have been more fitting.
If they wanted to have some fun with it, change the jaggi into mickey mouse.
http://youtu.be/FbZ-chrOgGg
All the LA talent has been in Telltale and Laurence Holland's studio's since at least '00 era (And somebody else was mentioning that the whole X-wing line of games were sublicensed since the beginning? If that is true then only the adventure games really came out of LA. And the internal development pretty much became stillborn as soon gaming moved from 2d to 3d.)
You don't like Obama. We get it. Way to go about spewing your hate all over the internet.
There are real people here who just lost their jobs. A game studio that produced some great games in the past just closed. Nobody deserves this kind of problems. And here you go, trying to score political points on their misfortune.
FWIW, the folks at LucasArts have my condolences. I hope you all get jobs soon, and thanks for the memories.
As for the Anonymous Coward (how appropriate)- what goes around, comes around. Enjoy your glee while it lasts.
Hey, the odds were on their side. Play the nostalgia card to children-of-the-90s with disposable income?
And that's exactly what Disney is doing. It's not like there will not be Star Wars games. It's just not LucasArts that will be making them, but other studios. And really the whole world will be better off for it, even if Disney is mostly just in it for the money - in fact this way it's MORE likely that a group that really cares about Star Wars might end up making a game.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
to bring back SWG? Please?
Speak for yourself. I never liked any of their titles.
AC, sack every Lucas Arts employee and those games would still be 'produced', so yes, GP knows what 'produced' means. Bottom line is, LucasArts *don't* know what a producer is, and Disney can hold their own meetings directly with Telltale et al without LucasArts.
Slay -> slew -> slain.
I see it also like that. There was nothing coming out of Lucasarts except mediocre Star Wars tie ins for decades.
The Lucasarts of the old with great games died a long time ago.
Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison of Mouseketeers here.
Anyone but Britney! Noooooooo!
Actually, no. First, Lucas is old. Second, none of his three kids had any interest in running the company in his absence. Say George dies, it probably goes into a trust and is disassembled. No more ILM. No more Skysound.
In hindsight, it looks like Disney is gutting the company for IP. As a soon to be former employee (more than just Arts got cut this past week, more about the bloodbath will probably come out over the next couple weeks) we have nothing but respect for George for giving us the opportunities that we had. Selling to Disney (or someone else) seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It sucks worse than you know to take a job at a company specifically because it's 40 years old and 'rock solid', then to be unceremoniously shown the door like that. It's downright traumatic.
P.S. 1313 was not several years away from being done, it was much closer than that. Like holiday 2013 close, by my estimation.
Star Wars: Battlefront was a cheap mod for another game.
The Jedi Knight games were made by another company.
Republic Commando was piss poor.
Tales of Monkey Island went downhill when it went 3D, the originals are older then ten years, the recent games were made by Telltale games.
Lego... you are aware that these were not original Lucasarts games either?
No wonder you post as an AC. I would cower to if I called these great lucasarts games.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Game development isn't Disney's core competency. Licensing the IP to independent studios is a much better model... Just consider how shitty the Disney-owned LA games would be when they would underfund and overpressure LA.
Oh, come on! I understand you might not like Sam&Max or Monkey Island, but you've got to admit Rescue on Fractalus a.k.a. Behind Jaggi Lines for 8-bit Atari was a work of genius! It was the first game that literally made me jump out of my chair when the alien started knocking on the window.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Lucas sold out at least 15 years ago when he started working on Episode 1. Since then he has raped everything Star Wars and even bent poor old Indie over a barrel for a massive royal buttreaming without even the goddamn basic human courtesy of a reach-around (to misquote Full Metal Jacket).
The Disney cash was just the fire sale at the end of a decade-and-a-half of post-sell-out franchise-milking.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yes, but the question is why. If nothing good has come out of there for a while then was it simply because management were doing an EA/Activision and only interested in churning out the same old rehashed boring FPS type games or whatever with no innovation? The point is, did the whole studio need to be axed? or did management just need replacing with people with a little more vision.
Maybe they did the right thing, maybe they did evaluate thoroughly what talent there was left and felt there was indeed nothing of value there, but given the nature of a company like Disney I'd be surprised. I'd wager this is less about getting rid of an under performing unit and more about making their money from simply selling licenses of to the franchises to anyone willing to pay if it means bringing some money in which makes an internal development company for use of these licenses pointless.
I don't like people using the government to steal from their neighbors.
I.e. you think all tax is theft, and you want to live somewhere with no taxes (and thus no government) - let's say Somalia. Off you go then....
From the ashes of disbanded studios, new great studios rise like a Phoenix.
So, in all the news, they talk about lucasarts studios being shutdown,
so what happens to ILM ?
industrial light and magic is/was the best special effects studio bar none.
inquiring minds want to know
"Taxes" aren't theft. Taxing person A to fund giveaways to person B is theft.
Lucas sold out in 2012 to avoid the Obama tax increases.
I bet you're the kind of guy who blames Obama when they get your order wrong at McDonalds, aren't you?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
So they don't do like when Commodore shut down, where the last employees burnded an effigy of the CEO Mehdi Ali on their farewell party.
Documented by Dave Haynie in The Deathbead Vigil.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Lucas sold out in 2012 to avoid the Obama tax increases.
I bet you're the kind of guy who blames Obama when they get your order wrong at McDonalds, aren't you?
I'm a known Obama-hater (Monsanto whee! Drones yay!) so I'm sure you will ignore me but what in there is Obama-blaming? He didn't say Obama closed Lucasarts, did he? The tax increases are a fact, Lucas selling out to avoid them might be a fact or might not, but if it is that's Lucas and not Obama. Tax increases are a fact of life no matter who the president is, because all the presidential candidates presented for our approval are part of the same system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Answer:
F) Depends on where you are sitting
Honestly, why is not liking Obama or his policies "hate"? People lost their jobs, it sucks. He's blaming it on Obama's policies. Is he right? I dunno. Is it hate? Nah.