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Curiouser and curiouser 10 Mar, 2008, 22:34 / 7 comments

By Gabez


You remember how we secretly knew about Jim Ward leaving LucasArts before the news official broke, because someone with a LucasArts IP address got to the site through Googling "Jim Ward quit LucasArts"?

Well, a few days ago, a LucasArts IP address got to the site through Googling "Jim Ward LucasArts Fired"!

A LucasArts spokesperson issued the following statement: "huh? Fired? Who told you that? Oh, er... I mean... that's not true! Ward was our wonderful leader!! We have no internal fragmantasion here! The fact that we're working on a game called Fracture is complete coincidence!"

"Coincidence"? Or all part of... !!
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7 Comments

  • Huz on 12 Mar, 2008, 20:14…
    I absolutely love the new lease of life that's been breathed into... THE COVER-UP!!!

    Excellent work Gabez.
  • Gabez on 15 Mar, 2008, 17:05…
    Oh, I love the whole "THE COVER-UP!!!" thing so much. A running look at the ways in which LucasArts are trying to paint a rosy glow on everything might be good.
  • Shmargin on 11 Mar, 2008, 14:33…
    I disapproved of the man, and while I can almost say I'm happy hes gone, it doesnt mean some other moron whos never played a SCUMM game isnt going to take his place.

    Shmargin remembers when LucasArts was cool....
  • Kroms on 11 Mar, 2008, 15:03…
    I think all in all, you gotta hand him credit for saving the company. But I agree, too much Star Wars in his time. But then again, who would have made Grim Fandango 2 or Monkey Island 5? I mean, Ronzo, Schafer, Noah Falstein, Dave Grossman, Mike Stemmle....none of them work at Lucasarts anymore.
  • jp-30 on 11 Mar, 2008, 17:30…
    Speaking of Non-Sta Wars games, all's been very quiet on the 'Fracture' front for a while now.

    New games featuring old LucasARts IP could easily be done via outsourcing or licensing to a 3rd party such as Telltale.

    The odd thing for many of us (which I will repost from the forums) is when you compare LucasArts to the Music or Movie industries; Compare to say Sony / SonyBMG. They'd never stop producing, for example, Michael Jackson Thriller CDs, the classics will always keep selling. Especially when on the 20th anniversary, and now the 25th anniversary they repackage the album with a couple of new bonus tracks and new artwork. And of course they re-release it on new media (UMD, Minidisc, digital download) too. They keep selling to collectors, plus people who have lost or worn out their old copies, and of course to a whole new audience.

    It baffles me that LucasArts (and many other gaming publishers, to be fair) don't treat their back-catalogue with the same reverence as a continual source of income as music or movie companies do. This is especially odd when Activision have been releasing WinXP / Vista compatible versions of the LEC Classics for the past couple of years outside the USA, and an open source emulator shows that the Scumm games can run on handheld devices.

    Wake up and smell the money!
  • The Tingler on 11 Mar, 2008, 18:18…
    Yeah. What is especially astonishing is their persistance in not putting their old adventures on the DS. I mean, duh!
  • Shmargin on 11 Mar, 2008, 18:43…
    Yeah, that is 100% baffling. They could start selling games like DOTT and FOA for $29.99 or even $39.99 on the DS, a price those games havent seen in over a decade, and people like us would deffinately buy them.

    Not to mention the fact that the games are just good period, and would be decent looking games on the DS also, attracting new people to the games also.

    But in order for that to happen, Lucasarts would have to admit that those games exsist and that they were once able to create quality entertainment that doesnt have a Battle of Hoth level.