How LucasArts Fell Apart

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 27, 2013 @04:25AM from the why-couldn't-you-just-make-a-new-xwing-vs-tie-fighter-game dept.

An anonymous reader sends this story from Kotaku's Jason Schreier about the downfall of LucasArts: "Over the last five months, I've talked to a dozen people connected to LucasArts, including ex-employees at the company's highest levels, in an attempt to figure out just how the studio collapsed. Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity. They told me about the failed deals, the drastic shifts in direction, the cancelled projects with codenames like Smuggler and Outpost. They told me the stories behind the fantastic-looking Star Wars 1313 and the multi-tiered plans for a new Battlefront starting with the multiplayer game known as Star Wars: First Assault. All of these people helped paint a single picture: Even before Disney purchased LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, in November of 2012, the studio faced serious issues. LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels."

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So .... by gstoddart · 2013-09-27 04:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

So essentially the same thing that happens at every large company over time with roots in creating stuff?
It seems like corporations more or less get to a point where they collapse under their own weight and cease to be able to actually do things.
In my experience, that happens right around the time accountants start micro-managing everything, and when winning "buzzword bingo" happens in every company call.
At some point, companies change from being places that create stuff and can get things done, and morph into an entity where you need huge reams of paperwork to get a new pen. At that point, everything you do starts to feel like a futile gesture.
The accountants won't let anything happen, and management is more focused on covering their own asses than building anything new.

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1. Re:So .... by gstoddart · 2013-09-27 04:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I've known people who worked at IBM, and in a lot of ways they have the exact same problems.
  And, except for Pixar and Marvel which Disney has bought and not yet ground into dust ... Disney spent an awful lot of years putting out endless, lousy, direct to video sequels and other stuff which was just an endless rehashing of stuff they've already done. Which is why they wanted LucasArts in the first place I'm guessing.
  Sometimes stuff gets done despite a management structure stacked against you. But over time, even that can get beaten down.
  
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  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
2. Re:So .... by Kelbear · 2013-09-27 04:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Corporate accounting doesn't call the shots, accounting tells managements the results of the shots that have been called. Finance takes accounting's results, evaluates and extrapolates, and makes plans for the future. Somewhere between management and finance, decisions get made. Ya got the wrong guy.
  The only companies that get run by accountants are accounting companies.
3. Re:So .... by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 05:00 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I don't think it's all the fault of accountants. Human nature encourages nepotism and favoring friends, regardless of actual quality of work. So after a while all the management positions end up filled with mediocre managers who all got the job because they were buddy-buddy with someone, not because they had earned it or had real leadership skills. And once a corporation becomes mediocre, it will stay mediocre. It's very easy to be a mediocre worker in a quality environment, you just have to know how to look busy or failing that, how to intimidate people. However it's almost impossible to be a quality worker in a mediocre environment. You end up discouraged, unsupported, even hated by co-workers until you become mediocre yourself.
  
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4. Re:So .... by girlintraining · 2013-09-27 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  So essentially the same thing that happens at every large company over time with roots in creating stuff?
  No. A great many large companies whose main charter is "creating stuff" manage to retain competent managers and remain responsive to competitive market pressures. They are amongst the largest and most successful companies on the planet. The ones who do not retain competent managers and are no longer responsive to competitive market pressures, we have a name for: Bankrupt.
  The top 10 companies in the US, by founding year:
  1. Walmart: 1962
  2. Exxon Mobile: 1999 (Exxon: 1982, Mobile: 1911)*
  3. Chevron: 1984*
  4. Phillips 66: 1917*
  5. Berkshire Hathaway: 1839
  6. Apple: 1976
  7. General Motors: 1908
  8. General Electric: 1892
  9. Valero Energy: 1980*
  10. Ford Motor: 1903
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  * It is worth noting that almost all major oil companies can trace their roots back to Standard Oil. Very few oil companies have gone bankrupt since oil became a major commodity; They most usually either merge with other companies or are broken up by government regulators. Thus the 'founding' dates of these companies is not really good context for how long they've been around. On paper, they may be relatively new, but these companies typically have lineages over a hundred years back.
  
  It seems like corporations more or less get to a point where they collapse under their own weight and cease to be able to actually do things.
  At least in the United States, a curious statistic is that about 40% of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, despite making up around 10.5% of the population. To quote Forbes; The revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants of children of immigrants is greater than the GDP (gross domestic product) of every country in the world outside the U.S., except China and Japan. To me, this is smoking-hot proof that complacency kills more companies than economics; How else do you explain how some of the poorest and least-advantaged on arrival here manage, within a generation, to control some of the largest assets in this country?
  
  In my experience, that happens right around the time accountants start micro-managing everything, and when winning "buzzword bingo" happens in every company call.
  Your experience is not objective. People tend to overvalue their own personal experience, emphasize negative events, and are total and complete crap when it comes to estimating risk and probability. We have spent trillions trying to prevent terrorism, but spend very little in comparison combating drunk driving. All of this is down to cognitive biases, of which you are engaged in one right here.
  
  At some point, companies change from being places that create stuff and can get things done, and morph into an entity where you need huge reams of paperwork to get a new pen. At that point, everything you do starts to feel like a futile gesture.
  Again, you're relating to your personal experience here, at the expense of objectivity. You are extrapolating from your own experiences and concluding that the entire world must run this way. And yet, if it did, civilization as we know it wouldn't exist; Economies would invariably self-destruct, having reached their use-by date, if everything tended to "morph into an entity where you need huge reams of paperwork to get a new pen".
  
  The accountants won't let anything happen, and management is more focused on covering their own asses than building anything new.
  I can see you feel very jilted about how the working class is routinely exploited by the wealthy. And frankly, if you live in the United States you have good reason to feel this way; the pay difference between CEOs and entry-level w
  
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Real Artists Ship by ScottCooperDotNet · 2013-09-27 04:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

Amazing they would kill completed games.
It sounds like George Lucas was never able to fully delegate responsibility for the worlds he created, so he had to be involved with everything. The executives would try to manage him by limiting what they told him in order to get a desired result. That kind of gaming killed their gaming.
1. Re:Real Artists Ship by Princeofcups · 2013-09-27 06:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Amazing they would kill completed games.
  It sounds like George Lucas was never able to fully delegate responsibility for the worlds he created, so he had to be involved with everything.
  It was obvious, even as a kid, watching the original movies as they were released, that Lucas had no integrity to tell his story by the third movie. Any vision that he had was thrown out the window to accommodate his greed to make tons of money off of merchandising. Everything since then has been either protection or promotion of his IP from those first two movies.
  
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Oooooh, let me guess.... by gestalt_n_pepper · 2013-09-27 05:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

They grew and decided they needed to hire some newly minted MBAs, accountants and an HR department.
Almost immediately, anyone who did *productive* work was either passively ignored or actively punished for doing anything innovative or productive, while the aforementioned business school parasites determined how best to extract any remaining value in the company and place it into their personal bank accounts before moving on the the next victim.
But of course, that's just a guess. I mean, how often have any of us seen *that* happen?

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One sentence says it all by UnknowingFool · 2013-09-27 05:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

One ex-LucasArts employee told me they think the franchise is in more competent hands under EA than it ever was with LucasFilm.
Then LucasArts was truly fscked.

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Re:Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by osu-neko · 2013-09-27 05:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you give people what they ask for, you quickly discover that people don't actually know what they want.

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Re:FTFY by Princeofcups · 2013-09-27 06:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

LucasArts was a company paralyzed by greed, overconfidence, and incompetence from executives at the highest levels. The fans consistently told them what they wanted, and they were consistently ignored.
Fans need to get this into their heads. They are NOT the market. Any movie or game will USE the fans to get a jumpstart on the marketing through name recognition, but the market is the millions of people who will go to see or buy on impulse, especially around christmas. There are not enough fans to fund a major motion picture or video game with the production values that they expect, nay demand.

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Re:That's a new twist! by firex726 · 2013-09-27 06:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Same for my GF..
She's been a hard worker for the same place for years, knows everything that goes on, and makes a decent amount. One day they lay her off and hire on someone at less than half her old salary. A month later they are calling her and asking that she comes back; new person is slower and does not know as much, they would have had to hire two more people to keep pace with her old workload.
Companies all over want loyalty and quality work for employees; they just dont want to pay for it.