The International House of Mojo

Inside LucasArts

The LEC HQ building is disguised, I think perhaps out of laziness, but also because hiding the building is probably a good idea to prevent marauding fans (like us for example) from trying to get inside. The lobby is not in anyway disguised. LucasArts share a lobby with THX and LucasLearning, each with their own achievements lining the hallways, but none has a greater wall decoration than LucasArts. A bigger-than-life Full Throttle picture is the first thing you see when entering LEC's part of the building. It's Ben on his bike, with the logo above him. Suffice it to say that I want it. This is the first of many things we see and covet on this trip. In fact, I loved being there, but it pained me not to be able to take away with me the original box art from Monkey Island 1, posters of old classic games, and a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

Once more we walked into the LucasArts part of the building, and more old game posters lined the walls. They also had a Pod Racer arcade game in the lobby... I wonder if anyone actually uses it.

After seeing sooo many things we wanted to have, old Full Throttle bandannas, cardboard cut-out Manny and Guybrush, posters, art, lunchboxes... everything!!

We walked past the familiar Ben Throttle entrance and then Tom gave us a pretty detailed tour of the place, explaining why the board rooms are named after things from old games and Star Wars, and that one of them he named himself, by randomly sticking a picture of Chewbacca on the unnamed one. From that day forth it has been known as Chewbacca. We saw some concept art from an unannounced title, but you don't get to hear about that. It does look interesting, though.

We saw a whole load of concept art for Star Wars Battlegrounds; it was everywhere, and another as-yet unannounced game. We collected a few bits and bobs for ourselves and for prizes, including a few review copies of some older games and continued on our quest. We got to see some crazy stuff that LucasArts has lying around, that's for sure:

They have some strange props made for an Industrial Light and Magic party that was held one year, including a Starship Troopers bug, and a 10 ft. tall model of the Iron Giant, both of which were made from cardboard boxes. There were also a bunch of Star Wars props made from card and bits. A huge scale AT-AT walker stood in the corner of the QA dept, and just outside was the cockpit from an X-Wing, apparently built by someone in their garage. (Someone had stuck a picture of Simon Jeffery onto the windshield.).

"What was it really like inside?" I hear you cry!, Well: The working spaces are pretty similar to any office space, the large rooms divided by moveable walls. But this was different. The atmosphere was quiet, and the lighting was dark, and efficient air-conditioning cooled the rooms. The workspace separations were spaced out to create a maze of working areas. Offices and conference rooms were built randomly into the walls, and each employee's workspace was decorated, not only with art and promotional things from the games they had worked on, but with things from other games, cartoons and films. Each space was entirely personal to that worker. Some people had been creative and made props from games themselves, such as the office with the infamous rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, hanging from a rope. The computer in this office had a desktop background that was made for thescummbar.com, and they were obviously fans of Monkey Island. Tom was unsure of whose office it was. There were arcade cabinets, table football, ping-pong, miniature hockey games, and a cartoony cow-couch.

We walked around various parts over and over, in case we missed stuff. Concept art from games new and old lined the walls along with amusing signs for departments and huge back catalogues of games. Downstairs in the PR and international department, there lives a massive collection of all the games released in different countries, along with their unique box art, and merchandise. And you are so lucky - We took some lovely example pictures for you.

We walked out of the building with more gaming, PR and marketing things than we could carry, and drove home to Petaluma.

We had a great time seeing the place where our favourite games are thought up and created, and we will hopefully get to go back there some day, (Right, Tom? Invite us back! Please?) I'd like to thank Tom Sarris for letting us in to drool over everything, and everyone else at LucasArts for not looking confused when we were introduced as the guys from Mixnmojo.com. It's seems like a great place to work, but is any work that great? Yeah, I suppose it is, really. Damn. Never mind.

Written by James Spafford (Spaff)
© The International House of Mojo 2001