The International House of Mojo

I believe most of the good game companies started off good back when the original game team slits up and makes their own unique titles. In Sierra Roberta Williams made Kings Quest, Al Lowe made Leisure Suit Larry and some other games, and the rest of the people also had their own teams on a title. But Lucas Arts used to have Ron Gilbert and he quit after the second monkey island game so the Lucas Arts people took that job over to fill in the rest of the story with their own nonsense ideas. I liked COMI, but it just would've been better if they still worked on it with Ron Gilbert 's original intentions. Now George Lucas has invested in having his company make the Star Wars games, movies, books, and everything continue to be made even after he dies.
That's probably why you see no more new titles because there are not many extra game project leaders producing their own titles under the Lucas Arts comany name.

The re-makes of Duke of Hazzard and Bewitched-- both of which were tv series-- as full scale movies themselves were bad ideas. Comparing that with newly made games is really a misfit analogy. I hate to think that Lucasarts has become a generic game factory-- instead of an innovative game company. The statement of Jim Ward explains why Lucasarts is becoming a mediocre game-maker. It has everything to do with age too. When George Lucas was young, he was bursting with creativity. Now he is old-- he is bursting with lust for money. Its truly sad that they can't come out of the vicious circle of Star War games. I started hating Star war games from last year-- yet anything Lucas made in the past won my heart instantly.

The re-makes of Duke of Hazzard and Bewitched-- both of which were tv series-- as full scale movies themselves were bad ideas. Comparing that with newly made games is really a misfit analogy. I hate to think that Lucasarts has become a generic game factory-- instead of an innovative game company. The statement of Jim Ward explains why Lucasarts is becoming a mediocre game-maker. It has everything to do with age too. When George Lucas was young, he was bursting with creativity. Now he is old-- he is bursting with lust for money. Its truly sad that they can't come out of the vicious circle of Star War games. I started hating Star war games from last year-- yet anything Lucas made in the past won my heart instantly.

I'm so pissed and powerless.. I could sob my little heart out.

The transition from "my favorite game developer of all time" to "contemplating sending hate mail" is now complete!

LOL "We can do better than those old IPs", or what the quite is...

I am not sure they can pull it off... making new better games than DOTT, SamnMax, Monkey Island 1+2+3, The Dig, Full Throttle.

LucasArts arent a "game genius", or anything, are they? They just make halv-good games with Star Wars themes?

This Jim Ward is a marketing genius perhaps, and my guess is G. Lucas doesnt give a crap about the games them selfs, just that they make some money, not alot of money, just some, to keep LEC alive..
:) just a guess :)

Edit: -quite +quote

Why does he remind me so much of a washed-up football player?

Hey look! This gives me another reason to hate LucasArts!

Hey, if anyone from Lucas reads this, tell your boss hes a fu@&ing idiot, and that maybe if they could back up any of that BS with at least one game with a story that didnt have the words "Star" or "Wars" in the title, people might beleive that Lucas is capable of something other than suck.

Ok, I get what he's saying; he's a real business man at heart, that's pretty clear. But I have to ask: WHAT NEW IPs?!???

It's ALL STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS! There's NOTHING NEW that's come even close to taking the place of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, DOTT, Sam & Max or Grim Fandango.

Back in the day (the 'glory days', if you want), just about every LucasArts game was a brand new IP that did incredibly well. What NEW Intellectual Properties are they developing NOW?!?

Hey, hey, hey! They have a new rollercoaster sim coming out! Sure, it's not actually made by them. And granted, it obviously has no story. And OK, it looks positively 2001. And yeah, it is in reality a remake of a mid 90s game. Wait, I'm sure I had a point?

This guy should tell what he said about old licences to Nintendo, sega, Capcom and so on.... they would have a big...big laugh.
Anyway, where is the challenge in selling StarWars games? a hamster could handle that... Lucas is even worse than EA concerning risks and original games.
So please, Lucas, if you have no respect for your glory old days and licences, sell them to people who love them, want to revive them, and are able to do great stuff with them.

"Force Commander expansion pack"?!? Ha!

He said 'We can come up with better ideas than those games [MI, DOTT], and WE WILL', fucking asshole!

Yep, way to alienate the fanbase. That annoyed me, too.

I get what he's saying, but no matter how forcefully he says it, it doesn't make new cool IPs pop out of the air.

LucasArts is a creatively stagnant cess-pool at the moment :( All the best Star Wars game have been developed outside of LucasArts anyway.

That's exactly what I thought... He basically said "STAR WARS is better than all those games!" because Star Wars is the only idea they've had since then.

I also hated the way he said "yeah, well, we COULD bring back those games"... oh, and he avoided the question. The guy wasn't asking for DOTT 2 or whatever, he wanted more games with a sense of humour and good writing... they don't even have to be pure adventure. If he's into more IP, then good, I want to see more original adventures. What a bogus argument!

Yeah, exactly. It IS possible to create new, original, funny IPs to stand up to the old games: look at Psychonauts or Grim Fandango.

If I thought LucasArts these days was capable of producing such a funny, original game like Tim Schafer is capable of, then I'd be all with Jim Ward. The trouble is, Mercenaries 2 and ANOTHER theme park game does not inspire me with confidence.

The funny thing there is that while Ward has been touting Mercenaries as a great ongoing franchise based on original IP, it would look all the world like LucasArts have been cut out of the loop regarding the Mercenaries sequel.

No mention of Mercenaries2 on the lucasarts E3 homepage and no mention of LucasArts on the Mercenaries2 website...

Plus LEC only got Mercenaries in the first place because EA discarded it :(

Jake, people in your office seen the clip yet?

For the first time I'm thinking there is a slim chance LucasArts could offload its old IP.

I would only trust it in the hands of (some of) the original developers, so...

Dave Grossmann, are you reading this? Tentacle / Mansion episodes from TellTale would be nice?

Why would they sell their IP when they've got potential plans for it in 2015? ?

Man, no one unloads IP unless they really have to. A good IP is solid gold in this industry.

Yep, keeping an IP costs zero money. I doubt they'd sell unless they were close to bankruptcy.

Come on bankruptcy!! :)

I'd rather have no adventure games from LucasArts than have Monkey Island 5: The Secret of the Secret of the Secret of the Giant Robot beneath Monkey Island

Me neither, but his lame-brained TV show remake comparison is LOL-worthy, and an insult to the great games that played a large part in LucasArts' legacy.

Jim Ward is a bastard.... Who's with me to LA?? We're going to take him down!

Starting to miss Simon Jeffery now...

I think so, since Jim Ward is President from LA.

Hell, I'm missing Mike Nelson.

And the 'bots!

But Simon was cool, he shouldn't be used here sarcastically.

Yep, didn't he try and set-up those 'fan liason' people? They were nice.

That's some really special logic there.

In the interview his reasoning for ditching these IPs is because he'd rather come up with "new, fresh ideas." Exactly what new and fresh ideas is LucasArts freaking coming out with. Just because something like Mercenaries or Thrillsville has a different named slapped on it doesn't change the fact that it's exactly like ten thousand games that came before it.

And both those two games you mention are just publishing deals for LucasArts. Not developed in house at all.

That?s the second plot, why i hate Jim Ward.
But the good old stories are from LucasArts. :)

My bad - Thrillville is probably in-house as no 3rd party is mentioned in the press release. I was thinking of Traxion.

Thrillville comes from Frontier, the developers of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (and the long-announced Elite 4). Bur yes, it doesn't look very... uhm... exciting.

Thrillville looks terrible. Terrible. :~

So by that logic they should not have made a new Star Wars trilogy I guess. ?

Lol! Good point!! By his reckoning there shouldn't be any Original Trilogy Star Wars Games... doh!

I think you'd find a good number of people who do wish episodes 1-3 had never been made.

No, I just wish they'd have been made by someone who hadn't lost the plot completely.