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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Off the record vs Anonymity by malakai · 2013-09-27 04:31 · Score: 1

Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity
As a non-journalist, what is the difference?

--
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
1. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by evil+crash · 2013-09-27 04:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity
  As a non-journalist, what is the difference?
  Um, IIRC, off the record means I'll talk to you, but you can't publish what I told you. Anonymity is you can print what I said, but not who said it.
  
  --
  "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
2. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by clickclickdrone · 2013-09-27 04:40 · Score: 2
  
  >As a non-journalist, what is the difference?
  As an ex-journalist, I have no idea. I'd say it was the same thing. You could possibly argue if you actually quoted someone it would be under anonymity but if you just spoke to people and wrote your own thoughts/conclusions it's off the record.
  
  --
  I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
3. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by noh8rz10 · 2013-09-27 04:59 · Score: 2
  
  off the record you can paraphrase or include in background, but on the record yet anonymous you can quote. huge difference.
4. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by Lithdren · 2013-09-27 05:04 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's the difference between "Some sources cite redbull energy drink as a possible cause of the crash" vs "An anonymous source who worked at the plant said "Oh yeah, its clear Redbull and actual bulls are a really bad idea, those steer went crazy and caused the crash."
5. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by UnknowingFool · 2013-09-27 05:42 · Score: 1
  
  Also off the record means you acknowledge that you interviewed an individual in the story where anonymous you cannot name the person.
  
  --
  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
6. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by i+kan+reed · 2013-09-27 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  So, regardless, the main point of any article with anonymous or off-the-record interviews is that red bull sucks?
7. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by Stormy+Dragon · 2013-09-27 10:10 · Score: 1
  
  If you call a steer a bull, he is thankful for the honor, but would much rather have restored what was rightfully his.
8. Re:Off the record vs Anonymity by torsmo · 2013-09-27 19:28 · Score: 1
  
  So, in essence, "off-the-record" is highly dependent on journalistic integrity.
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.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1. Re:So .... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-27 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  People get used to their big fat cushy salaries and don't push hard. When you're making just enough to pay rent at a startup, you push back hard when shit gets pushed on you, because "you don't need this".
  The Redlettermedia reviews of the Lucas movies famously show George surrounded by a group of yes-men looking both simultaneously mortified by The Phantom Menace and congratulating George on a great job well done.
  They wanted to keep their fat cat jobs so they went along with it.
2. Re:So .... by jambox · 2013-09-27 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  How do you account for the IBMs or (more creatively) Disney's of the world, then?
  
  --
  You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
3. 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.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
4. Re:So .... by guru42101 · 2013-09-27 04:56 · Score: 2
  
  IBM has had several restructuring and re-orgs which is exactly what he's saying the upper echelon employees try to prevent.
  Disney acquires new income sources via acquisition, have diversified sources of income, and their products are long lasting with a new set of customers every generation. Their internal creative development team goes through spurts of good and bad that would kill a normal company. The Princess and the Frog was lackluster at best. My 3yo nieces LOVE Lilo and Stich, Finding Nemo, Lion King, Little Mermaid, Bambi, and so on.
5. Re:So .... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-27 04:58 · Score: 1
  
  How do you account for the IBMs or (more creatively) Disney's of the world, then?
  IBM was the canonical example of a company paralyzed by bureaucracy. When I joined in 2004, we were made to watch a History of IBM video that was quite blunt about how they almost went out of business in the early 1990s because (as they put it, but quoting from memory) "customers thought we were arrogant" and "it would take us over two years to ship an empty box".
  Disney's core asset is its animation department. Everything else it does (theme parks, TV channels, etc) depends on animation to make popular content and characters. After a string of flops in the 2000s, they essentially dumped their own animation department'smanagement and replaced them with Pixar's.
6. 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.
7. 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.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
8. Re:So .... by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  Companies that encourage creative people right from the get-go, and reward creativity.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
9. Re:So .... by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-27 05:08 · Score: 1
  
  I came into this thread and searched for "nepotism" and it brought me to this post...a relative of mine who worked there said it was a major problem. That and the Wii Star Wars "Swing to progress" game that flopped.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
10. Re:So .... by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 05:11 · Score: 2
  
  at some point each project has to make a lot more money than previous projects to keep revenues and profits the same or growing.
  Ahh yes. How many corporate leaders can't see past the share price? How many managers can't seem to think past their next bonus cheque? I'd say pretty much all of them. That leads to a lack of vision - work becomes about the job instead of about whatever it is that the company started doing. And yeah, no one wants to OK a risky project, and they forget that a successful company is BUILT on risk. The unsuccessful ones fail long before "making it big". Again, it's vision. If you know what you want then it's just a question of finding the most sensible path towards it. But familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes.
  I'm not sure I buy the argument that better games require huge budgets. If that were true, then there would be no more new companies, since obviously a start-up isn't going to be able to match the multi-million dollars a company like EA can pour into a project (unless they use kickstarter, lol!). Vision, once again. Games don't HAVE to be done with the absolute latest graphics and technology. They have to be fun and unique to differentiate themselves from the rest, a slightly different way of doing things, a minor change to the view of the "game world", slightly different interface, etc. Combine that with fun and you get a good game.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
11. Re:So .... by Dahamma · 2013-09-27 05:15 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  There is a huge different between "losing creative vision and putting out mindless crap" and "driving the company financially into the ground".
  Disney has undoubtedly made some crap over the years - and honestly, Pixar's last few efforts (Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University) haven't been even close to their earlier ones. But they are still making money hand over fist.
  Same with EA - poster child of game company losing sight of creativity and pumping out sequels, but unlike LucasArts, they do in fact have clear business goals and are making a ton of money from their mostly mediocre/repetitive offerings.
12. Re:So .... by gstoddart · 2013-09-27 05:16 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I've been at places where the bean counters have put so much work on people it's impossible to get their jobs done.
  I know people who have to enter their time into no less than 4 different time systems every week. Because the people who own those systems don't have any integration and expect everyone else to make their horribly flawed process work.
  My timesheets have to be submitted by Friday at noon, despite that I often work after hours work on Friday nights because that's our change window. They want accurate timesheets in place before the work is done, and get upset when you have to change it later. I've been told on more than one occasion that I need to provide 100% accurate data, even if that means providing it before I know. If I don't know how late I'm working, how can I provide you with a value for how many hours I worked until I'm done? I can't tell you in advance if we'll be done at 9pm or 1am depending on what we're doing.
  Hell, at one company we were asked to provide our time accounting in five minute increments, but they got the hint when 2 out of every 5 minutes was classed as "telling you what I've done the last 3 minutes".
  I worked at a place where the accountant decided that getting a Solaris machine with a CD-ROM was too expensive, so they updated the PO to drop the CD-ROM -- and then you couldn't install the OS because there was no CD-ROM. The machine sat in a corner for 6 months until we could get a PO for the CD-ROM. We spent FAR more in man-hours fighting with them to get a bloody CD-ROM drive than the initial cost would have been. (In fact, given what they were billing for me at the time, I believe it was about 15 minutes of my time as the client would have paid)
  I've been in development shops where accounting decided that building the product cost more than their estimates -- despite them having no bloody clue what was actually involved in the process and their formula being useless. They just came along and said "according to how we calculate this, this took more than it should" -- even the VP was stunned by that one and had to explain to them they needed to go away.
  I don't give a damn what their actual title is -- when the micro-managing departments which have no understanding of what is required to make the product are making it impossible to make the product, then from my point of view, the accountants have taken over.
  Sorry, but I've worked in far too many corporate environments where the process overshadows the actual work, and the process is frequently divorced from reality.
  It's like every Dilbert joke come to life some days, or Office Space. Never underestimate how badly a company can go downhill when the internal business processes make it impossible to actually do the business of the company.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
13. Re:So .... by jedidiah · 2013-09-27 05:20 · Score: 2
  
  There's a sort of old boys club when it comes to large corporations. Once companies get to a certain size they become unmanageable except by similar larger entities. This goes for things like their IT department too. This also applies to government contracting.
  One beaurocracy laden Fortune 100 company services another.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
14. 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
  --
  * 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
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
15. Re:So .... by ryllharu · 2013-09-27 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  My timesheets have to be submitted by Friday at noon, despite that I often work after hours work on Friday nights because that's our change window. They want accurate timesheets in place before the work is done, and get upset when you have to change it later. I've been told on more than one occasion that I need to provide 100% accurate data, even if that means providing it before I know. If I don't know how late I'm working, how can I provide you with a value for how many hours I worked until I'm done? I can't tell you in advance if we'll be done at 9pm or 1am depending on what we're doing.
  This is exactly why my company has timesheets due on Tuesdays for the previous week. How your situation can exist is simply beyond me.
16. Re:So .... by ArhcAngel · 2013-09-27 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  Diversification.
  IBM has divisions which cover a breadth of industries so if one isn't doing well another should allow them to continue operating until that market improves or they can divest themselves.
  Disney owns everything else.
  
  --
  "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
17. Re:So .... by firex726 · 2013-09-27 05:42 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Also despite the fans and critics loving Empire, George himself considered it the worst of the originals and was not as involved with making it, and resulted in shooting taking much longer than expected. Basically all the good shit about Empire, you can thank Gary Kurtz.
  http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/12/entertainment/la-et-gary-kurtz-20100812
18. Re:So .... by gstoddart · 2013-09-27 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  This is exactly why my company has timesheets due on Tuesdays for the previous week. How your situation can exist is simply beyond me.
  Oh, believe me, I've tried to explain how it's not possible to do this, and that if they need accurate time they'll have to wait until my work week is over.
  But, nobody listens, and our BU can get fined for non-compliance. So every week I make up a number, and if I'm within 5% I leave it alone, and if I'm off by more than that I file an update and listen to them bitch about it.
  It's complete nonsense, but very real. It's the tail wagging the dog, essentially -- and it's a "no exceptions" policy, which means all of the people who do after hours work have the same problem.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
19. Re:So .... by Rob+the+Bold · 2013-09-27 05:59 · Score: 2
  
  This place hasn't done anything worth it since what? 1977?
  You're thinking of the parent company, Lucasfilm. TFA is about LucasArts, the videogame division.
  And even if we were discussing Lucasfilm, and even if you're a die-hard Ewok hater, you're still neglecting "The Empire Strikes Back," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Temple of Doom," "Last Crusade" . . .
  
  --
  I am not a crackpot.
20. Re:So .... by FishOuttaWater · 2013-09-27 05:59 · Score: 1
  
  You can't just close Friday out at 5:00, and roll the rest into Monday?
21. Re:So .... by tompaulco · 2013-09-27 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  I guess in your situation, I would just go ahead and report that I was working all of the hours between noon on Friday and 8 a.m. Monday morning, and then just not go back and fix it since that pisses them off. Then, since they are requesting my time by the hour, i would go ahead and submit to the labor board that they are benchmarking me by the hour so I must be an hourly employee and therefore entitled to overtime, and oh by the way, here are my timesheets for the last 5 years indicating 80 hours per week or thereabouts.
  
  --
  If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
22. Re:So .... by tompaulco · 2013-09-27 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  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
  That's not entirely true. SOME of the management positions get filled with mediocre managers who were unable to perform the technical job, so the person good at the technical job gets stuck at the same level, while the people who are incompetent are able to continue rising through the organization.
  
  --
  If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
23. Re:So .... by i+kan+reed · 2013-09-27 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Not to worry, there's plenty of awesome and incredible kids programming that far exceeds that of my youth on today. Not on Disney, though.
24. Re:So .... by atheos · 2013-09-27 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  overtime calculations don't work that way.
25. Re:So .... by tlhIngan · 2013-09-27 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  This is exactly why my company has timesheets due on Tuesdays for the previous week. How your situation can exist is simply beyond me.
  Oh, believe me, I've tried to explain how it's not possible to do this, and that if they need accurate time they'll have to wait until my work week is over.
  What happens (it happens to me as well) is that the managers need the timesheets to figure out how billing went for the week. And that their bosses demand that information by COB Friday. Since they need to process the information, they need that data by noon Friday. The upper management then needs to process that data to have it ready by noon Monday.
  Of course, they demand accurate billing and to estimate on the hours on Friday.
  In which case, if you know that sometimes you have to go to 1am, I'd say to fill out the timesheet to 1am. If you worked less, file an amendment saying you didn't need it - if they don't process it, oh well.
  Sometimes instead you do it Friday-noon to Friday-noon
26. Re:So .... by AK+Marc · 2013-09-27 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  Then you haven't worked many places. I've been places where $10,000 of paperwork was done for a $5000 purchase. That's "run by accountants".
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
27. Re:So .... by SeaFox · 2013-09-27 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, because all the Star Wars properties where done at exactly the same time. They just waited years to release the latter parts for dramatic effect.
28. Re:So .... by hairyfeet · 2013-09-27 07:12 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Uhhhh..actually EA has been bleeding money hand over fist for the past few years, hence why the previous CEO is gone. Sure they make money hand over fist...and the previous CEO blew it like a sailor in Vegas by having a single minded obsession in beating Warcraft and Call Of Duty. I don't know if you read the articles over the past year or so but many titles such as Deadspace 3 would have to sell something like 6 million copies just to break even which is why the previous CEO had the gall to say that new games should be $80-$100 a pop!
  In a way what happened to EA reminds me of MSFT. Like MSFT they had a CEO that instead of playing to their strengths got obsessed with the other guy, like MSFT they thought that making a half ass clone of the other guy's product would work and like MSFT the CEO thought the answer to any reality showing that his lame brain ideas weren't cutting it was to double down and throw ever larger piles of money on the fire.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
29. Re:So .... by Zeromous · 2013-09-27 07:24 · Score: 2
  
  This is baloney. I have mod points every other week and contribute comments, firehose, etc.
  
  --
  ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
30. Re:So .... by Culture20 · 2013-09-27 07:28 · Score: 1
  
  They do after the first week of shifting the hours every week.
31. Re:So .... by lgw · 2013-09-27 07:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Disney has undoubtedly made some crap over the years - and honestly, Pixar's last few efforts (Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University) haven't been even close to their earlier ones. But they are still making money hand over fist.
  Brave was just fine - a new idea, not a sequel, and how often does that happen in Hollywood these days. Plus the theme of "growing up means learning to compromise - yes, even on the things you find important" (with the same in reverse for parents) was nice.
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
32. Re:So .... by hairyfeet · 2013-09-27 07:43 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Hell that is true everywhere. I was called out on a service call with a "code red" ( means they can't function until i fix the problem, VERY expensive as i have to drop everything and head straight over) at this electronics shop because it turned out the secretary had seen a TV show the night before about how "strong password protect systems" and decided she'd "protect the company" by coming up with a strong password and...well i'm sure you know what happened next.
  Well after I got the thing straightened out and this was like my fourth time of dealing with a code red because of that secretary i asked "You know she is costing you a LOT of money with all these service calls, why don't you just let her go?" and the owner got a dreamy smile at the thought, then shook his head and said "Nothing I'd love more but I'm afraid the wife would kill me if I fired our new daughter in law"
  As for TFA I think we ALL know whose fault it is...George Lucas. From what I have seen talking about him behind the scenes he reminds me of Gene Roddenberry in that while he has interesting CONCEPTS he just doesn't know how to flesh things out. From the sound of LucasArts he kept coming up with new ideas and the entire place had to suddenly do a 180 every time he opened his mouth because nobody had the balls to say no to him. Look at the Prequels or Indy 4 to see what happens when nobody tells him no, same as Roddenberry kept going for those lame "God is a machine" and "Wesley is great!" stories.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
33. Re:So .... by whoever57 · 2013-09-27 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  This is baloney. I have mod points every other week and contribute comments, firehose, etc.
  
  Did you consider that your experience may not be typical?
  For about a year, maybe more, I always had mod points. Now, I have them very rarely. In my experience, having mod points has very little correlation (positive or negative) with posting, reading or metamod-ing.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
34. Re:So .... by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  No argument there. I'm sure Lucas isn't poor. It was his company. He can do what he wants with it. Maybe it was just a hobby for him and he got fed up of the money sink. Sucks for the employees though.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
35. Re:So .... by Koreantoast · 2013-09-27 08:37 · Score: 2
  
  I get tired of the constant blaming of corporate woes on the bean counters "ruining things" with questions of money. A company run by "technical people" is not really any better. I've seen it first hand: huge amounts of R&D are spent design technically exquisite and cutting edge products. They talk with their customers about what they want and manage to work out beautiful systems that solve their wildest dreams. The problem? The actual price tag for those products is way more than the customer's budget can afford; they chase after that last 1% percent of efficiency and end up doubling the price. Thus, the customer ends up buying the competitor's solution which was not nearly as whiz-bang but was "good enough" to get the job done. All we have left to show for it is huge amounts of money burned on "science projects" with nothing to show for it. You need balance between the different camps to make a business work, not simply blame one side or the other for all the problems in your enterprise.
36. Re:So .... by bfandreas · 2013-09-27 10:32 · Score: 2
  
  This one is a bit different. The owner who knows nothing about software development made frequent change requests and whoever stood up to him got fired. Small wonder management was a direction- and spineless set of bastards. In the end they only made Star Wars games for that one-trick retard.
  
  But at least he got them to squeal like little piggies.
  
  --
  20 minutes into the future
37. Re:So .... by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 10:49 · Score: 1
  
  Brave was just fine - a new idea, not a sequel, and how often does that happen in Hollywood these days.
  I haven't watched it continuously end to end, but I got the impression I'd seen something like it before.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
38. Re:So .... by MichaelSmith · 2013-09-27 10:59 · Score: 2
  
  I don't understand how they will continue to make money when its simply a corporation for doing business with other corporations.
  By doing eactly that. Why should it be a problem?
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
39. Re:So .... by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 12:42 · Score: 1
  
  Look at Rio Tinto. Do you buy anything from them? Me neither. In fact I've never even seen one of their stores.
  They must be going under, don't you reckon?
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
40. Re:So .... by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  Only four out of your ten can be said to "create stuff" in the same way as a game company.
  Half the list are oil companies.
  Top ten on what criteria, by the way?
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
41. Re:So .... by Dahamma · 2013-09-27 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  Uhhhh..actually EA has been bleeding money hand over fist for the past few years
  Actually, they have made a decent profit in the last 2 years.
  But yeah, lost a buttload the two years before that :)
42. Re:So .... by Dahamma · 2013-09-27 13:10 · Score: 1
  
  Well, movie opinions are just that - opinions, but I thought it was somewhat tedious, and the characters and plot didn't have near the depth of almost any of the Pixar movies before it (including the sequels). Critics tended to agree. And I didn't say it was crap (unlike "Planes", which was a godawful Disney attempt at extending one of Pixar's more mediocre franchises) , I said it wasn't close to their earlier ones, and I stand by that opinion :)
43. Re:So .... by hairyfeet · 2013-09-27 14:06 · Score: 2
  
  But how much of that was "real" profits versus what MSFT does when they have a turkey and just shifting money around? I know that many of the triple A games they released in the last 4 years would have had to broken first day sale records just to break even, and with Riccitelo's single minded obsession with beating Call Of Dookie and Warcrack he had them sink just insane amounts into IP that went nowhere, not to mention shitting all over good IP like Deadspace by giving it "broader appeal" which translated into "make it more like Call of Dookie".
  And then finally there is the shit icing on the fail cake, Origin. Many of us that actually bought their products won't anymore thanks to origin, hell I have keys for Sims 3 and Deadspace 3 from the Humble Bundle and haven't used 'em because of Origin, like GFWL its a crap service and has no chance in hell of competing with Steam, the prices are too high, sales too few, and DRM too big of a PITA.
  So before I took their word for it I'd want a look at the books, just to make sure they aren't "spreading the wealth" from their frankly too few hits like medal of Honor to their flops.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
44. Re:So .... by hairyfeet · 2013-09-27 14:12 · Score: 1
  
  According to TFA that is a big YES, there was a "handler" that stood between the devs and Lucas and she would actually force them to REHEARSE what they would say, just to make sure it wouldn't offend George's delicate sensibilities.
  If you haven't seen it go to Red letter Media and look up Plinket reviews Indy 4, that video has a LOT of behind the scenes stuff and you'd be amazed how many BAD ideas Lucas pushed for, it was only when Spielberg said "fuck it" and just let George do what he wanted that indy 4 turned to shit. For just one example for indy 3? he wanted it set in...get this...a HAUNTED HOUSE!! That's right, Indy meets Ghostbusters. the ONLY reason you didn't have that shit was Spielberg said "oh HELL no" but by the time of Indy 4 he was happy with a new grandkid and didn't feel like locking horns with Lucas.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
45. Re:So .... by Dahamma · 2013-09-27 15:34 · Score: 2
  
  Hey, I was somewhat agreeing with you... they lost a lot of money 3-4 years ago (like $300-$700M). But they made ~$70-100M in each of the last 2 years.
  But these are public companies - "shifting" money around only works with crazy complicated setups with independent subsidiaries, etc - the bottom line still tells the final story in this case (which honestly at this point they probably wish didn't...)
  You are clearly passionately pissed off at EA. Honestly, I haven't bought any EA games since Mass Effect 2 (which was luckily still mostly Bioware) and Dragon Age (which disappointed). But their "books" are all public and online, go look at them yourself if you want to.
46. Re:So .... by RubberDogBone · 2013-09-27 16:41 · Score: 1
  
  The place where I work is about to go from two+one time tracking systems to three+1 and it's going to be a disaster.
  First, there is payroll. This is the +1. Depending on the country, even salaried employees have to enter time like a time card. In other countries, it's automatically populated for salaried and only the hourly have to punch in and out.
  Then there is Task Tracker 1, the ancient system we use for case management. All of our performance numbers come out of this. But it does not bear on payroll whatsoever. Your manager will smack you about the ears for not using this one. But even they admit it's broken. You cannot search for anything. Nobody uses it the same as anyone else. Nobody cares.
  Task Tracker 2 was brought in two years ago and is cumbersome, clunky, undocumented, and very hard to use. You get one shot at entering numbers and it locks out changes. If you forget to submit by Saturday, you lose the billing for that week. There is a ton of paperwork to undo do the loss. You have to enter the same numbers in this system and Tracker 1. It is completely redundant and incapable of automatically passing the numbers across. Do it twice. Yay. Most of us do anything we can to avoid this system. It also has no bearing on payroll. But it is used heavily for revenue prediction quarterly financial reviews and any flaws will get you dragged in front of the VPs or CEO to explain your numbers. It can be brutal. (Given nobody really understands this thing, you can bullshit your way out of most things so I have no idea why they trust anything anyone tells them about it). Tracker 1 and 2 are home grown written by programmers who have mostly quit over time so there is nobody left who understands any of the code or why text boxes float in the middle of the screen and obscure things you need to see. Oh yes, mind the 30-second screen time out. Type faster and save your work.
  With that weakness in mind, Task Tracker 3 has just been introduced. This one is a third-party product which is hard to use, completely unlike either of the previous trackers, has no data connection to anything and is being used simultaneously so you get to enter time a third place. Well, if you know how. There is a TON of training to learn how to use it but nobody has time to do the training -which is full of typos and shit grammar. Very hard to keep from laughing. But it's not funny because we are all hopelessly backed up with work and screaming clients. Daily work consists of figuring out which clients can be ignored today versus which one we have to give lip service to, and which ones actually need something. Sometimes they leave and we cheer. Management, however, loves five-dollar clients. We have lots of them. We lose money every time I pick up the phone to talk to one of them.
  Anyway, nobody has any great joy for this new product. It's all "best practices and workflows" and alien to the garbage we've gotten used to using. We didn't write it so we have no control over any aspect. It does stuff we don't need. It misses key things we do need. Don't click on certain help functions because that triggers an automatic Professional Services billable charge to have someone help you (I love this personally; it's like a landmine that generates billing JUST by clicking the wrong thing that is not marked in any way. It's genius!) The vaunted mobile app is totally broken out of the box. And it nags constantly to enter time. I don't have time to take the training course but damn if this thing wants me to put time in it every damn hour. What the fuck. The lady who championed this thing bet her career on it and it's probably going to be the end of that because _nobody_ is embracing this thing and yet it cost a LOT of money to buy and license. I report to her so it might well be the end of me too. They are going to flush this department like a toilet.
  So to recap, three different and non-communicating systems for task tracking plus payroll. I hardly care anymo
  
  --
  Sig for hire.
47. Re:So .... by rtb61 · 2013-09-27 16:46 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, any company that thinks it's smart to cancel a game fifty percent complete is being run by goofball bean counters. That's a massive investment in art and algorithms just thrown away with no attempt to recover the investment. An attempt to recover games that are on 10% done should be made, they are not movies, they are computer programs and it shows a real lack of understanding, let alone a game 80% done, now that is just crazy.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
48. Re:So .... by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 23:22 · Score: 1
  
  Immigrants get crappy manual jobs and then some start their own small businesses (often a convenience store or restaurant). They know that driving a bus or cleaning offices isn't fun so they push their kids to work & study hard. Being born here they know the language & system better than their parents - that plus the drive means they do well and go into the professions or take over the parents' business and grow it. They, having only experienced hardship second-hand, spoil their kids who end up as wasters.
  Rags to rags in three generations. It's a stereotype but like most it's built on a core of truth.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
49. Re:So .... by forkazoo · 2013-09-28 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  There are certainly many ways that things can go wrong, but there are many technical people who do understand the costs of technical work. At the last place I worked, we could never get approval to buy some off the shelf software to do stuff that we had some very finnicky internal software. Everybody assumes that the development team would have wanted to make their own under all circumstances, but in that case the cost of maintaining the internal tool was enormous, and the cost in user time to deal with the unstable system was huge. But, bean counters could never see past the sticker price of what we had "for free" already, so we spent roughly the annual cost of the off the shelf tool every single month by not having it. Though, there was another department that had exactly the opposite problem. They had an internal file format that was supposedly very slightly better than the industry standard equivalent. (nobody had any numbers or tests to demonstrate this -- it was just 'known' because the developers were all assumed to be super geniuses.) A large team of people maintained plugins for commercial applications, libraries, tools, converters, etc., to support this internal file format. Bean counters might rightly question paying for the developer team on that project, but technology suffered from NIH syndrome so it persisted.
50. Re:So .... by ebvwfbw · 2013-09-28 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  In my experience, that happens right around the time accountants start micro-managing everything, and when winning "buzzword bingo" happens in every company call.
  Exactly. I've seen it personally too. Stood by and watched it happen to companies like HP. Somehow HP has managed to survive the micro accountants best efforts to destroy it. We used to call it the Harvard MBA fungus. They would come in and destroy. "This makes more business sense." Sure if that's all you consider, however you're MISSING THE BIG PICTURE! Won't listen because they're from Harvard. Fortunately they've been slapped down for the most part now.
51. Re:So .... by lgw · 2013-09-29 09:18 · Score: 1
  
  Huh - I've never seen any "depth of character" in any Pixar movie, unless you mean technologically. I guess I see the opposite - I find most Pixar films quite predictable, and tedious outside of action sequences (which they have a knack for keeping interesting, on the whole). Really, I'd say the only Pixar films that have every gone somewhere I didn't expect were Monsters Inc, and Brave - the latter more for not being the same hero's journey plot that every fantasy seems to use than true originality.
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
52. Re:So .... by lgw · 2013-09-29 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  Possibly, but I doubt you've seen an American animated fantasy film like it before - for once, it's not the "hero's journey". It had much more of a Miyazaki "girl coming of age" theme, really, but it wasn't that worn out "girl leaves home and gets job" tale either. It was a nice, quiet "accept that growing up means not getting your way"
  So sure, it's a coming of age tale, like almost every movie ever animated in America, but at least it wasn't one of the 2 fantasy plots I've seen 50 times now.
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
53. Re:So .... by Zeromous · 2013-09-30 03:14 · Score: 1
  
  Had you considered that *your* experience is non-typical? This is far more likely than my experience being an anomaly:
  Slashdot is a computer program. Mod points are determined by an algorithm so I'm certain there is a correlation... although am (by design) unaware of its precise operation.
  
  --
  ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
It's okay by fey000 · 2013-09-27 04:32 · Score: 5, Funny

DON'T PANIC!
Upper management still got paid, so everything worked out.
FTFY by girlintraining · 2013-09-27 04:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels."
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. This isn't apathy or indecision -- that's flat out incompetence. They mismanaged SS LucasArts into a iceberg, then locked the workers below-decks and abandoned ship while the band played the Imperial March.

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:FTFY by dunezone · 2013-09-27 05:40 · Score: 2
  
  > LucasArts was a company paralyzed by greed, overconfidence, and incompetence from executives at the highest levels.
  
  I'm going to say greed mostly greed and lazyness. During the 90s they were pushing out 3-4 titles a year under their name. By the 2000's they had very few titles under their own name. Most games were being developed by another developer with the Lucas Arts name slapped on for licensing purposes. They would release a game every few years to show they did something. Disney probably saw this and realized right away this whole division could be eliminated the IP's merged into their existing licensing division since thats basically all Lucas Arts did for the last ten years.
2. 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.
  
  --
  The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
3. Re:FTFY by i+kan+reed · 2013-09-27 06:39 · Score: 2
  
  As long as we ignore the success kickstarter has had with fans helping to produce actually good games.
4. Re:FTFY by jtnix · 2013-09-27 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  I am surprised there aren't more stories here from people who worked at LA or knew someone who did, so here's mine:
  I had a good friend who worked at LA from I think 1999 to about 2003 or so. I remember us both being elated when he got the job as a C/C++ tools support programmer. He worked on the Playstation Bounty Hunter game, among others. After a couple of years I was chatting with him and he told me a couple of things, which are backed up by the article.
  1. The long-arm of Mr. Lucas was something to behold. Basically what TFA said about his reach into 1313's development sums it up for all of the SW titles. He told me a story about a memo that went out prior to an all-companies employee bash at Skywalker Ranch to "allow Mr. Lucas his space" so he can enjoy the event. The result at the party was a 6 to 10 foot radius of nobody around GL the whole time, which my friend and others found particularly amusing.
  2. Middle management was young, overconfident and woefully inexperienced which was a mind-fsck for pretty much everyone else on the development and design teams. My friend blamed project management and the revolving door of managers for the loss of the Sam and Max IP (expired) and Full Throttle sequel cancelations, among others. He said that this was why Force Command pretty much sucked (before his time at LA, but heard the stories from other emps.) and was ultimately why he left to work at another gaming shop which was 'a whole lot more fun.'
  From what I was told, pretty much getting a job anywhere in the Lucas empire was all you were supposed to want; pay grade was sub-par, even for experienced developers and designers, I mean you are working at a Lucasfilm Ltd. company, that says it all! Perks were 'alright', but the hiring preference was generally for talented people fresh out of college at sub-par wages. Including project management positions. Still reading the article, so some of this stuff may be covered there already.
  Well, that's all I got. Anyone else?
  
  --
  She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
5. Re:FTFY by rk · 2013-09-27 12:02 · Score: 1
  
  I can back up at least some of the sub-par wage thing. As a senior software engineer, I got an offer in 2006 from Lucasfilm (not LucasArts) to help write tools to manage graphics assets. The job looked fun, I liked my potential co-workers. Then the offer came: $80,000/yr. Working in SF. No telecommute, no WFH even one day a week, not even working 4 longer days instead of 5. I got them to come up to 85k (Whoa, don't break anything there, George!), but compared to the region of the country I was working at the time that was like a 20% pay cut. The only way I could even remotely make it work would be to move way the fuck out to Tracy or something, and even then it would be tight. Spend 25 hours a week commuting? F that.
  Assuming I got decent raises for the 7 years since, I'd even now only be making barely more than I am at my current job in Phoenix, where my commute is 20 minutes by train and I own a nice (not spectacular) house on a good-sized lot in town. What are the chances of me owning a house 20 minutes from the Presidio for a $922/month mortgage?
6. Re:FTFY by stymy · 2013-09-28 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  Kickstarter seems to have raised at most about 3 million dollars for games. That's decent money for an indie title, but a small fraction of the budget for a AAA release.
always a bit of a disappointment by ruebarb · 2013-09-27 04:38 · Score: 1

lilke most of us in the 90's, I loved the X-wing/Tie Fighter assault games - you're IN the tie fighter, man - awesome!
After the multiplayer - (X-wing vs. Tie Fighter) - I was always disappointed they didn't keep upgrading and updating that universe - the Dark Forces/Jedi Academy games were good - but Battlefront didn't do much for me - neither did Rebellion - (a Masters of Orion ripoff) - it seemed like they were always a few months behind whatever the big thing was and came out with less interesting products sometimes...
really miss the old X-wing and Tie Fighter games though....dang - wish I had them set up on a 486 somewhere
RB

--

----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
1. Re:always a bit of a disappointment by kannibal_klown · 2013-09-27 04:43 · Score: 2
  
  X-Wing Alliance came after "X-Wing vs Tie Fighter" It had a decent single player campaign with a story... BUT it also had a solid online multiplayer experience.
  While I didn't like it as much as regular "Tie Fighter" I do have to say Alliance was quite fun.
2. Re:always a bit of a disappointment by dslbrian · 2013-09-27 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  I loved the X-wing/Tie Fighter assault games - you're IN the tie fighter, man - awesome!
  For me the Freespace series took over that genre (back when it existed). More recently the X-series games (X3AP). Upcoming X-Rebirth is looking pretty awesome.
  The thing I don't get though - I would be honestly surprised to find a single gamer in the executive staff at LucasArts. I really don't know how execs get placed who have no knowledge of what their product is, or what makes it good or bad. People rail on it in reviews and yet they keep churning out the same garbage. Anyone with 1st person experience of some of their games would know that, so it is obvious their execs have none. Worst of all, Star Wars basically invented the concept of movie-based merchandise and tie-ins (toys and games). How they can turn THAT into a money-losing venture is a really amazing story of FAIL. Not that it is an exclusive club (*cough* SimCity)...
3. Re:always a bit of a disappointment by alexgieg · 2013-09-27 05:35 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I really don't know how execs get placed who have no knowledge of what their product is, or what makes it good or bad.
  I've seen executives saying and believing something along these lines: that their job is to be executives, that what they need to know is how to execute, and that the specifics of the business they're executing (pun intended) doesn't matter since you can replace one business for another and at their level it all boils down to the same thing, so why bother? Sure, some experience in the area is a bonus, but by no means a requirement.
  History has shown time and again that's not how reality works, but as the saying goes few things are more difficult than to make someone understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it.
  
  --
  Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
4. Re:always a bit of a disappointment by firex726 · 2013-09-27 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  IDK about the X series. It's not quite the same, losing a ship in there can be a serious loss of an investment, to the point you often try and avoid combat.
  If you think there is a chance for a pirate raid, you're better off bypassing it.
  You want an EVE like learning curve, and writing scripts? X is your series.
5. Re:always a bit of a disappointment by minstrelmike · 2013-09-27 07:20 · Score: 2
  
  I really don't know how execs get placed who have no knowledge of what their product is, or what makes it good or bad.
  I've seen executives saying and believing something along these lines: that their job is to be executives, that what they need to know is how to execute, and that the specifics of the business they're executing (pun intended) doesn't matter since you can replace one business for another and at their level it all boils down to the same thing, so why bother? Sure, some experience in the area is a bonus, but by no means a requirement.
  That sort of gets back to why they have to do market research. It's like that Tom Hanks movie Big where he's trying to play with some transformer-like toy and says it's not playable. If you actually play video games and like to play them, you'll know yourself whether it's working for you or not. I think the real secret of success is that everybody likes something uber-specific but what certain folks like is liked by more people than other ideas. Think Minecraft or Sims, both written originally so the authors could enjoy the game. Rockstar developers play their own games and it shows. Other lesser-known and less profitable companies do the same thing. They aren't hits because they aren't hits; not because the people aren't paying attention. A game that appeals only to Star Wars geeks has less possibility of market penetration than a game for anyone who has been shat upon by a bird.
  
  But then you have the companies run by managers and accountants who hire market researchers and play by the numbers like an insurance company. That's actually workable for awhile, but only in a growing market.
Re:That's a new twist! by NatasRevol · 2013-09-27 04:48 · Score: 2

Because one or a few workers can't affect the company like one VP can?

--
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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 Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-27 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  It sounds like George Lucas was never able to fully delegate responsibility for the worlds he created
  Actually, he specifically delegated that exact task away (there is an individual who does nothing but take care of the facts of the universe) and has squashed most of the potential contradiction issues by simply saying canon is the only reliable story (so everything else can be tossed whenever he wishes to dismiss it).
2. 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.
  
  --
  The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
3. Re:Real Artists Ship by steelfood · 2013-09-27 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  What it comes down to is that George Lucas was as bad at directing a software company as he was at directing movies. Classic rags-to-riches untouchable syndrome where the support people become yes men (JK Rowling is another such example, but seems to have managed it better; Obama is yet another example).
  Look at Episodes I-III. Look at the revised Episodes IV-VI. That is the real George Lucas. Hardly deserving of the cult status he currently enjoys.
  
  --
  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
People don't like Star Wars as much as they did by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-27 04:57 · Score: 1

The prequels just didn't capture the hearts and minds of the younger generation the way the originals did for mine. Not a complete flop, commercially, but right now the highest selling toy line is that Spyro the Dragon Skylanders stuff, IIRC.
They didn't sell merch the way I'm sure the executives had hoped, and with the movies themselves disappearing in the rear view mirror, I can see how the executives would get apathetic and frazzled.
It doesn't help that a lot (most?) of the video games from the prequel era sucked. I liked the Battlefront games, though it really felt short of what they could have been.
Star Wars fandom is an older group, who one by one get too old to play video games or watch cartoons. I'm too old to wear a Darth Vader t-shirt.
The franchise needs new, and much younger fans. That's what Disney is good at. Business-wise it makes a lot of sense. It worked for the muppets, and for Marvel's tired line-up of cookie cutter superheroes.
1. Re:People don't like Star Wars as much as they did by Gilmoure · 2013-09-27 05:11 · Score: 1
  
  After introducing daughter to original SW (meh from a 4 year old), she eventually saw prequels at friend's house and was digging the look of it all. Then Clone Wars cartoon came out and she had someone to identify with. That's what got her hooked. She's old enough now to dislike the prequels' storytelling and is both excited and fearful for new movie. She worries after seeing Star Trek movies there will be too many lens flairs.
  
  --
  I drank what? -- Socrates
2. Re:People don't like Star Wars as much as they did by nitehawk214 · 2013-09-27 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  I'm too old to wear a Darth Vader t-shirt.
  Well that is more of a sad story about your life than the franchise.
  
  --
  I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I figured it was the end... by ducomputergeek · 2013-09-27 05:00 · Score: 2

After they went from making games in house to being just another publisher and then just an agency that licensed the star wars names for games.
This happened in the late 1990's when the X-wing series went from being produced in house and moved to Totally Games. (I don't remember if that was Xwing vs. Tie Fighter or Xwing Alliance). Later on I noticed that they weren't even publishing games. Games were being released by Activision or EA.
I know the space combat sim died 10 and going on 15 years ago. That's why I've spent as much as I have looking forward to Star Citizen.

--
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
1. Re:I figured it was the end... by nitehawk214 · 2013-09-27 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  After they went from making games in house to being just another publisher and then just an agency that licensed the star wars names for games.
  This happened in the late 1990's when the X-wing series went from being produced in house and moved to Totally Games. (I don't remember if that was Xwing vs. Tie Fighter or Xwing Alliance). Later on I noticed that they weren't even publishing games. Games were being released by Activision or EA.
  I know the space combat sim died 10 and going on 15 years ago. That's why I've spent as much as I have looking forward to Star Citizen.
  And X:Rebirth, and that Occulus Rift based game that CCP is teasing, but I don't have any confidence they will actually be able to deliver something good.
  But I am expecting a "Rebirth" of the space sim genre in the next few years. Technology is finally catching up with the imagination of the classic games. Does EA still own the rights to Wing Commander? Ok so that one won't be part of the renaissance.
  
  --
  I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Failure of the highest executives? by Legion · 2013-09-27 05:05 · Score: 1

And yet those same executives will be the ones with the easiest time getting new jobs...
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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1. Re:Oooooh, let me guess.... by Zeromous · 2013-09-27 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  No no no, according to half of this thread, this never happens and the greedy worker bees left with all the honey!
  
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Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by perpenso · 2013-09-27 05:16 · Score: 2

The fans consistently told them what they wanted, and they were consistently ignored. This isn't apathy or indecision -- that's flat out incompetence.
Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good, at least for new product design. Fans often tell you to be a derivative of some other game and/or an incremental improvement of your previous game. This sort of thing is a *classic* problem, not specific to the game industry at all, for an established company with a successful product by the way.

Now for improving a game once it has been released things change dramatically. Fans may not be a good source with respect to potential innovation but they are the ultimate judge of whether a game delivers the fun or not. Your innovation still has to pass the fun test. Developers have to put aside their ego at this point and deliver the fun as fans define it.

That said. Lucas Arts should have done a modernized version of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. Screw innovation. ;-)
1. 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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  "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
2. Re:Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by VortexCortex · 2013-09-27 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  The fans consistently told them what they wanted, and they were consistently ignored. This isn't apathy or indecision -- that's flat out incompetence.
  Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good, at least for new product design. Fans often tell you to be a derivative of some other game and/or an incremental improvement of your previous game.
  Apparently you've not heard of kickstarter, or indiego, or various other crowdfunding initiatives. Here's the thing: Gamedevs need market research. Doesn't matter where it comes from. The idea needs to be fun, and we need to know it'll be purchased well before we blow lots of money on the project. All that indecision? Let's let the player's decide! That will keep you from dumping too much money into a failed route, AND give instant feedback into the course of action that should be taken TO MAXIMIZE SALES.
  Sorry bub. Your secretive cabal of middlemen adding no value but extracting a price for their mere existence is doomed. This is the Age of Information. The content creators can work directly for the end users now.
3. Re:Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by minstrelmike · 2013-09-27 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Market research is over-rated. One part of the proof is all those researchers who don't produce hit products.
  Another part is all those professional book editors being paid to find the next great hit novel and passing on Gone With the Wind 39 times or other countless examples
  Another part is the surprise music hits such as Oh Brother Where Art Thou? vs the heavily invested records or movies which end up duds, despite market research.
  
  I read one study where the best music is 50% familiar and 50% unfamiliar. Too much familiarity is boring. Not enough means it isn't music to your ears.
  Kickstarter _is_ market research all by itself. It's going to 'fail' (succeed) at about the same rate as all those professional market researchers.
  End users often don't know what they want. Working directly for them isn't a panacea.
  Sorry bub. Folks still like genres. Those aren't pure inventions of evil salespeople. Consumers like categorization.
4. Re:Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 12:28 · Score: 2
  
  The can opener hasn't changed much in its original design since the 1850s.
  Totally has. The old rocking action type have largely been superseded by rotary pinch wheel ones.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
5. Re:Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good by KevReedUK · 2013-09-28 09:28 · Score: 1
  
  If there is one sure rule in game design, it's that players don't know what they want. If your business plan involves building the game based on who complains the loudest or longest for a specific feature, you might as well light your money on fire.
  True, up to a point. Customers may not know every feature that they DO want in a product, but you can be pretty certain that they will know what features they DO NOT want to see UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES in that product. Too many innovators and developers pay so much heed to the assertion (often true) that customers don't know what they really want, that they forget that they are capable of knowing what they don't want and hence ignore all feedback. This can often be a surefire route to failure.
  
  I would guess that LucasFilm have realised this, as there was only minimal screen-time for JarJar in Ep II & III, but the same does not appear to be quite so true as regards LucasArts.
  
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Re:That's a new twist! by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 05:16 · Score: 3, Informative

It's upper management's job to weed out "laziness and incompetence". Don't blame the workers if you hired incompetent workers. Blame yourself! But of course the trend is cheaper... I want the cheapest. Well, you get the cheapest, someone not qualified or barely qualified for their role. My girlfriend just finished working for a Fortune 500. Her salary was over $100k/yr. The company was trying to hire people for similar positions for much, much less, and surprisingly no one qualified seemed to want the job. Lots of people were interviewed, and they were all rejected. My girlfriend obviously will hold out for a similar salary in her next job. If she doesn't get it from an employer, she can easily get it through consulting. People will pay for the skills, but apparently corporations don't want to keep skilled people on the full time payroll.

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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Pretty much any company by Gothmolly · 2013-09-27 05:18 · Score: 2

" a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels."
Can really describe any decent-sized company.

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They pushed out their creative team by schweinhundert · 2013-09-27 05:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

The thing about Lucasarts that's ironic is that they were always at their best when they were *not* making Star Wars games. The ones that many current 27-35 year olds remember are the Monkey Island games, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle. Monkey Island 1 and 2 have been remastered and are likely making gobs of money compared to production cost, and Sam and Max was a hit for Telltale. But Lucasarts decided around the turn of the century to stop making original IP, cancelled the Full Throttle sequel, and Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and others jumped ship. At that point, Lucasarts *was* the Star Wars company. They lost their creative talent and just became a company with an IP asset but no vision.
The bit in this article that's surprising is that George Lucas himself, ever the twit, was coming in to meddle in the game production of Star Wars 1313. Changing the main character part way into production isn't like rewriting script pages and making a new costume; tons of assets had already been created around that one character. Maybe this unfortunate micromanaging was the reason Lucasarts contracted out their Knights of the Old Republic franchise.
1. Re:They pushed out their creative team by AK+Marc · 2013-09-27 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  They did fine with the Labyrinth game. I'd argue it was the basis for Monkey Island, and their other successes. For a while they made games, later they were "commercial" (stopped trying to create, and saw "create" as a hurdle to profit, not as a worthy endeavor to itself).
  
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2. Re:They pushed out their creative team by KevReedUK · 2013-09-28 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe this unfortunate micromanaging was the reason Lucasarts contracted out their Knights of the Old Republic franchise.
  I've got to admit... I think BioWare have done a pretty decent job with the franchise. I only hope that they don't go down the ME route with is and screw it up over future iterations like they did with ME3 vs earlier incarnations!
  
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  Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
Star Wars 1313 by danbuter · 2013-09-27 05:24 · Score: 1

This game looked amazing. I really wanted it. I hope that it is somehow saved from the scrapheap by Disney.
Re:Two Words: by jedidiah · 2013-09-27 05:27 · Score: 2

> RED TAILS.
Did they make a game out of that?
That could be a cool game if you did it right.
In general, they should have brought the flight sims back and released them on every platform available. Slap their brand on every kind of game out there.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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:That's a new twist! by Rob+the+Bold · 2013-09-27 05:49 · Score: 1

Not to say that it's not true but how many workers have ever come out and admitted that they dug their own companies grave through laziness and incompetence?
I know I'm being trolled by an AC, but here I go anyway . . .
Even if a company's going down the tubes due to an incompetent and lazy workforce, it's still a management failure for poor hiring decisions in the first place and/or not firing poor employees when appropriate. A poor workman blames his tools.

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I am not a crackpot.
The trouble is that it has a plot by Animats · 2013-09-27 06:12 · Score: 1

Games based on movies tend to have a "plot". With George Lucas interfering, that got completely out of hand. (Especially since Lucas sucks at plotting. What makes the Star Wars franchise go is production value, not plot or character development.)
A game is a place that you go and do things, not a story. Movie directors have a hard time with this. They want to lock the player into a track ride, like an amusement park.
1. Re:The trouble is that it has a plot by Darinbob · 2013-09-27 07:11 · Score: 1
  
  Lucas himself did not have much to do with LucasArts.
2. Re:The trouble is that it has a plot by Urkki · 2013-09-27 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  A game is a place that you go and do things, not a story. Movie directors have a hard time with this. They want to lock the player into a track ride, like an amusement park.
  Speak for yourself. I play games for the story, the rest matters only in context of the story and relative to it.
  Which is why I'll never forgive SWTOR2, may the ones responsible be suffocated in bantha excrement.
3. Re:The trouble is that it has a plot by UnknowingFool · 2013-09-27 10:22 · Score: 2
  
  Looks like someone didn't read the article. In the article, every once in a while, Lucas would push for changes to the games. For example 1313 after multiple changes in direction from Lucas was going to be about a bounty hunter. Then Lucas announced without warning to the press it was going to be about Boba Fett which had the development teams scrambling because the entire game was revolved around a generic bounty hunter. At the very minimum new CGI models had to be developed.
  
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  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Re:That's a new twist! by tompaulco · 2013-09-27 06:20 · Score: 1

It is the job of the leadership to make the company succeed or fail and the responsibility of the leadership to take the blame when it fails. If their employees suck, it is their responsibility to get new ones. If they suck as management, it is their duty to step down and let someone better take over. This actually happens in the far east, but is pretty infrequent in the west. Here, they just throw the worker bees under the bus and try to make the workers take the responsibility that the managers are supposed to take.

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If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister George Lucas by NonUniqueNickname · 2013-09-27 06:40 · Score: 2

We're all familiar with the works of George Lucas. How could any of us be even a tiny bit surprised to hear that game development under his direction turned out to be an endless re-write?
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.
The Innovator's Dilemma by perpenso · 2013-09-27 06:47 · Score: 2

Doing what the fans say is not necessarily good, at least for new product design.
You're using qualifying statements here to avoid being backed into a corner you rightly deserve to be.
I'm using qualifiers because the world is not black and white, there is no correct answer 100% of the time. Yet history shows that time and time again companies get into trouble and are displaced because they merely deliver what customers ask for. Similar-too products and incremental products. Game developers are *not* immune from this problem. This problem is so common it has a well known name, "The Innovator's Dilemma".

"successful companies can put too much emphasis on customers' current needs, and fail to adopt new technology or business models that will meet customers' unstated or future needs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

Note the word "unstated". The role of a good designer is to discover these unstated needs.

The notion that fans are a poor resource ...
Sometimes a poor resource. Being a game designer takes a *lot* more than being a fan of a particular game or genre.

... to use when making design considerations is a slap in the face to hundreds of highly successful open source products from Apache, to Linux, to Zend PHP. Indeed, for the most part, those products were created entirely by fans, ...
Wrong. If Linus Torvalds had listened to fans of operating systems back in the day he would have used a monolithic kernel in Linux.

... and with each iteration, become even more popular and successful.
Wrong again. For example Linux development is largely corporate sponsored. With such sponsorship comes direction. Linus is not even in the top 100 source code contributors for the Linux kernel.

You've spent your entire post here largely asserting that the fans are wrong ...
Sometimes wrong.

... and companies shouldn't listen to them. How, exactly, do you propose a company "deliver the fun as fans define it" if they aren't supposed to listen to them?
Fans rarely state, or are even aware of, all the things they will be fun for them to do. Or more generally customers often fail to state, or are aware of, all their needs or wants.
1. Re:The Innovator's Dilemma by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yet history shows that time and time again companies get into trouble and are displaced because they merely deliver what customers ask for.
  Like the Ford Edsel.
  And if Henry Sr. had listened to his customers, he'd have been a horse breeder.
  
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  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:That's a new twist! by minstrelmike · 2013-09-27 07:01 · Score: 1

Management is the 'entity' that designs (to be generous) the bureaucracy of the company.
That is the tool and it most definitely should be blamed when poorly designed.
Lazy workers are the result of stupid bureaucratic rulz; they are not the cause
When you cannot load an OS onto a machine because it's missing a cd-rom, well you can't do much else with it. If I actually have to explain that to management, we're in trouble. And it is not due to my laziness

I design the management software we use. More than half of my answers to their requests are "No." Most of the time, you don't want stuff implemented, even if it sounds like a good idea. Let's talk it through a lot. If you're still not convinced, then I'll lay out all the questions you or some committee will _have_ to answer because if there is a process, then there is a flow chart and inputs and outputs and decisions.
The problem in most companies is that the developers aren't allowed to say No. And in companies that contract out everything, there is an incentive to say "Sure, we can do anything you ask for." Writing software is easy. Writing software that actually solves a problem is hard because defining the problem and deciding how to measure and address it is hard.

It is the job of the leadership at the company to think it through and only ask for useful things.
Typo: would **not** have used a monolithic kernel by perpenso · 2013-09-27 07:02 · Score: 1

Wrong. If Linus Torvalds had listened to fans of operating systems back in the day he would have used a monolithic kernel in Linux.
Oops, typo. Left out the word "not". "... he would **not** have used a monolithic kernel in Linux".
Re:That's a new twist! by AK+Marc · 2013-09-27 07:05 · Score: 1

Most places crush the employees. I've seen one place where they got "employee complaint forms" and the box was filled with job applications from McDonalds. Another had a complaint box with no bottom located over a trash can. The management cared so little for the employees that the apathy became a joke. Where I work now (10,000 employees) they just started a new feedback program. Just testing, I submitted feedback, and they didn't respond in the window given for response.

Upper management can kill a company. Rarely can the workers do so. So blame should go with the management unless proven otherwise.

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Learn to love Alaska
People are not good stating needs/wants by perpenso · 2013-09-27 07:10 · Score: 1

... Gamedevs need market research. Doesn't matter where it comes from ...
And good market research is not simply asking fans what they want. Consumers often have **unstated** needs or wants, often things they are not even aware of. A good game designer figures out these unstated things.

Ever wonder why some online surveys are a series of comparison, one item differing from the other by one and only one specific feature, and that some of these comparisons seem similar or redundant? The reason is because such a series of specific comparisons often generates a more accurate list of ranked preferences than simply asking a person to rank of list of items.
Re:That's a new twist! by Dunbal · 2013-09-27 08:19 · Score: 1

I hope she doesn't go back. Imagine working for the guy who fired you for no reason at all. Yeah right, he'd get a big "fuck off I'll take my chances" from me :)

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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Re:Alliance was fun as a single player game.... by lgw · 2013-09-27 09:19 · Score: 1

Regardless it's time for us as a community to put Star Wars and Star Trek into the past and start focusing on making a creative universe for the future we will collectively control and share, and stop clinging to other people's universes and visions that will simply be handed to whoever can squeeze the most money out of it ad infinium (Because who here believes copyrights will ever expire in our lifetime?)
This is the most important thought in this entire discussion! Lucas crapped all over SW, B&B shat all over ST, it's clear that a fan-owned universe is the way to go!
But while the legal and financial frameworks now exist for such an endeavor, I'm not sure how you'd find someone to run such a thing. Without a central artistic vision, it'll all end up fanfic quality, or worse erotic furry fanfic quality, or worse still Twighlight quality. All of the inevitable ego battles and forks and so on are nothing new to Open Source, and not even really troubling, but who has the skill to lead/create such a thing without needing ownership? Authors in general tend to have just the opposite mindset.
Heck, the only person I can think of who created a fictional universe and not only doesn't sue fans over fan creations, but actually helps them by proving clips and other elements is .. George Lucas. Sigh.

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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Me's a gotta question by Hognoxious · 2013-09-27 12:14 · Score: 2

This place hasn't done anything worth it since what? 1977?
How long ago is that in parsecs?

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:That's a new twist! by Da3vid · 2013-09-28 09:32 · Score: 1

I've gotten the old, "How did you ever manage to do _____, _____ and ______? No one else can figure it out!" They still refused to pay the $5,000 consulting fee I offered them.
New Business Model by DarthVain · 2013-10-02 06:46 · Score: 1

1) Make a game that is basically X-Wing VS Tie Fighter, except updated. Better graphics, perhaps MMO down the road. Don't screw it up.
2) ???
3) Profit.
Now come out with a new improved version say every 3 years.
Use your office petty cash to buy the software rights to Firefly.
Build a game that lets you play a smuggler having adventures. Have actual original cast do voice acting.
Watch nerds throw buckets of cash at you between fainting spells.
Buy the software rights to Star Trek...