Jim Ward to Employees: No Soup For You 15 Jul, 2004, 07:54 / 17 comments
An internal memo from LucasArts' part-time president Jim Ward has appeared on the net. Basically, it's an announcement that there will be no bonuses this year, along with a lot of motivational words on making "insanely great games".
The news value of this memo is admittedly low -- after all, it's no secret that LucasArts isn't doing very well -- though we'd be lying if we said the memo wasn't interesting on any sort of level.<:MORENEWS:>
Ward calls for the LucasArts employees to make "Insanely great games that will restore the luster to the LucasArts logo so that when we, and our consumers, see it on our packaging and on our games, we'll all know that the Gold Guy is once again the mark of leading edge innovation, creativity and amazing fun." Where did we hear that before? (Pretend that sentence is linked to an archived Mojo interview with Simon Jeffery, then pretend Mojo has archived articles.)
Sadly, there is no mention of any intention to make less Star Wars games. "Make a difference," the memo reads. "Effect change. Make Battlefront, Galaxies, KOTOR II, Mercenaries, Republic Commando and the Episode III games the best that they can be." While it would certainly help to make the Star Wars games actually good, it's obviously only half the equation.
Okay, given that this is a leaked internal memo, it would probably be unfair towards Mr. Ward et al. to quote from it excessively on forums. Or to make crappy fan art with Photoshopped pictures of George Lucas to go with it. Or, say, a LucasArts hate 'em up game. Though I'd be surprised if -- after crushing all our little hearts with the cancellation of Sam & Max 2 -- anyone still has any goodwill left. At least Jim Ward likes the word "insane", so he probably means well.
Look at this comment:
Insanely great games that will restore the luster to the LucasArts logo so that when we, and our consumers, see it on our packaging and on our games, we'll all know that the Gold Guy is once again the mark of leading edge innovation, creativity and amazing fun."
IMO, the only way that Lucasarts will be able to make Insanely great games is if the heads of Lucasarts come to their senses & understand that there are more to Lucasarts than just Star Wars games. But since they seem to think that Lucasarts is only able Star Wars is the reason why i hate Lucasarts in addition to the fact that they cancelled Full Throttle 2 & Sam & Max 2. I love to old Lucasarts games such as Maniac Mansion, Day Of The Tentacle, et al. I like the Star Wars movies but I really don't care for the games, the only Star Wars game I own is Dark Forces. If Lucasarts wants me to buy their stuff, they need to go back to what they do best, make the best adventure games on the market.
I think the newscoverage earns an award of excellence, because isn't this the first time an unaltered version of bullshit hits the news? Haha! =)
Perhaps, except that LEC first said there were no plans in reducing staff, then a very short time later was staff was reduced. (like three weeks or so)
I don't doubt there can be fun working at LucasArts. People doing what they like to do, what they have educated them self in.
It sucks that managers, presidents or other top people don't know a fuck about what being a leader is. They suck ass most of the time. But most are good at cutting resources and make good statistics to whoever they them selvs answer to. It comes down to mostly "take what you can when you have the chance because everyone else would have".
Nice. It's nothing new though, but it's rare that "investigating" newspapers or TV media actually give shit to the ones deserve it.
Sorry for being wrong about details, if any. I wrote this to just make it clear that top people are just ordinary people, but most of them suck more than you think.
But, the optimist in me hopes deep down that Jim Ward can actually turn the company around, and again have them setting trends, not following them.
Why the hell are they wasting their time coming up with cookie cutter star wars games that are not revolutionary in any way. Why hasnt an original title come from lucasarts that isnt adventure but isnt bad, mercinaries? RTX? Wrath Unleashed? Not only have i not played those games, ive heard enough ho-hum news about them that i never even want to. It seems like there are no creative minds at lucasarts that can think of an amazing game project that is interesting for consumers and profitable for them. A company with such standing in the game industry should be coming up with games on par with far cry, half life 2, doom3, halo2. However they seem to be only interested in milking star wars action genre and riding it down with the ship.Now they have so much money invested into these new unoriginal star wars games that appeal to nobody but star wars fans (and not even all of them). Why do lucasarts new original games suck? I know george lucas really hasnt been much of a recent "amazing original story" inspiration, but the original games lucasarts make just look uninteresting at all. Lucasarts hasnt made any classic games besides KOTOR for a while in my opinion. Anyways enough rambling. I think lucasarts needs to start a few big projects that are half life 2 level originality (meaning not star wars) and large scale, otherwise theyre gonna slowly crumble away. Its too bad that adventures dont sell these days, but theres got to be a way to design them, a way to market them and to make them engaging without turning the whole idea into a cookie cutter shooter. I bet theres a lot of original ideas at lucasarts floating around, and a lot of good people still left, unfortunately they lack the leadership to focus that creativity and skill into games that match the standards of other developers.
I'd put a lot of it down to a lack of marketing nous. Star Wars games sell themselves, and because of that (in my opininion) the marketing team has atrophied. They have no idea how or to whom to market their original IP.
And that's tragic.
what's that?