How LucasArts Fell Apart

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."

Comments

So ....

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:So ....

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:So ....

[girlintraining]

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

It's okay

[fey000]

DON'T PANIC!

Upper management still got paid, so everything worked out.

FTFY

[girlintraining]

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.

Re:Off the record vs Anonymity

[evil crash]

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.

They pushed out their creative team

[schweinhundert]

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.

Re:That's a new twist!

[firex726]

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.