The International House of Mojo

A really good article appeared on 1up today. It is apparently a summary or reaction to David Fox's recent talk at Classic Gaming Expo and recollects the "bold experiment" of Lucasfilm Games back in its earliest days, days characterized by a ton of freedom for the developers, a non-Star Wars mandate, and even input from George Lucas that was slightly greater than zero percent. It's suggested that the studio's uniquely fertile situation (read: a small team of tech geniuses operating autonomously under basically no deadlines) is what resulted in its ambitious early successes and what paved the way for its peak years. You know, the ones that are miles behind us.

It's a preaching-to-the-choir kinda article, but it's nice to be pandered to on occasion and it's always lovely to see the studio's formative years get some appreciation. Also, there's a throwaway reference to Fox currently working on an "official Rube Goldberg game." I wonder what all that's about?

Update by Zaarin: Check out the Rube Golderg Game's Twitter account for the latest updates.

Source: 1up

Priorities appear well-ordered in this latest hype video for Star Wars 1313 filmed by CVG.

Source: CVG

The presidency at LucasArts has a very short shelf life these days. LucasArts president Paul Meegan has stepped down from his position at LucasArts.

Mich Chau, President and Chief Operating Officer for Lucasfilm had the following to say:

Paul has been a valuable member of the Lucasfilm leadership team and we wish him the best in his future endeavors. We remain committed to our current projects and will be re-evaluating LucasArts’ leadership needs to ensure that we make the right decisions to keep the studio focused.

The decisions of every LucasArts president since Jim Ward has been to make massive layoffs and cancel projects upon their arrival. It remains to be seen if this vicious cycle continues, but history has shown us that it probably will.

Update: The Verge reports that there's two people filling in to co-lead the company, Kevin Parker as interim head of business operations and Gio Corsi as interim head of studio production.

The idea of having two people run the company seems like a sensible one, keeping the business side and the creative side separate. It's unlikely that structure will continue when a permanent president is chosen, however.

Source: Threepwood4life

As was announced earlier this year, LucasArts is following up its two years of absolute stasis with - I can't believe they're taking this gamble - a new Star Wars game, one that impressed so much at E3 that a number of people, including this guy, are completely sold on LucasArts as a developer. Jesus is a grudge-bearing asshole compared to the attitude of forgiveness fans of ubiquitous franchises catch when you open the spigot back up.

The full article on Digital Trends features many quotes from Star Wars 1313's creative director Dominic Robilliard, who discusses the ninety-seventh internal reorganization that led to the fructifying environment the development team enjoys today, until oppportunistic hindsight decides ten years from now that this was actually another big mess that we've now totally fixed for real this time.

Much is implied by the author about how the new guard has ostensibly turned the studio around and put it back on track or something, but I couldn't help but focus on this part:

It's certainly a relief to know that LEC is taking developers who were originally being put on smaller, interesting projects before getting their heads on straight and just assigning them to additional Star Wars. It is sensible to be delighted by this because this is after all going to be Competent Additional Star Wars instead of Mediocre Additional Star Wars, and why would you possibly want something other than Competent Additional Star Wars from the company that once did this?

Source: Digital Trends

So you picked up the Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords in the bundle that has just been released with the original Knights of the Old Republic for PC by LucasArts. You may be wondering why The Sith Lords feels unfinished. That's because it was. LucasArts had Obsidian rush the game to make a Christmas 2004 release. That meant they had to delete or truncate a lot of content that was meant for the game, including the ending. Obsidian reportedly requested that LucasArts release an official update to the game to restore the game to Obsidian's original vision, but LucasArts denied the request.

Luckily, Obsidian included the cut content in the game's data files, and fans have gone to work restoring it. There was a fan project called The Sith Lords Restoration Project, but that project was uncompleted and the team disbanded in 2010. The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod has been filling that void. The newest release, 1.8, was released a few days ago. This release fixes many of the bugs from the official release and adds all of the deleted content that The Sith Lords Restoration Project did, as well as the rest of the cut content that the former mod intended to incorporate (which is all of the deleted content with the exception of the cut planet M4-78). You can view the full list of content the mod includes here.

ScummVM, the Sentimental Community Undertaking Maintaining Marvelous Visionary Masterpieces, is now at 1.5.0 with the release of "Picnic Basket".

Along with the 2D LucasArts adventure games, most 2D Humongous Entertainment games, and countless others, the new release supports another Humongous Entertainment game: Backyard Baseball 2003.

It also has new support for other games that don't fall under the Mojo banner: Blue Force, Dreamweb, Geisha, Soltys (including an English translation for the first time), and the children's games Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon, Magic Tales: Liam Finds a Story, Sleeping Cub's Test of Courage, and The Princess and the Crab.

With Valve recently releasing the software they used to produce the incredible 'Meet the team' videos for Team Fortress 2, it was only a matter of time before fans start utilising what is probably the most sophisticated machinima tool ever created to put together fantastic works of fiction, taking game fan videos to whole new levels of drama and intensity.

Oh, yeah. And to make stuff like this:

Update by Jennifer: They are indeed getting creative with the Source Filmmaker. I can't stop watching this one, so I thought I'd add it to here while the SFM topic is still on the top of Mojo's news feed. It does manage to just squeak through to meet the qualifications of Mojo coverage (I'm not going to say how though, as that's one of the funnier visual gags of the video).

LucasArts is hiring for multiple positions relating to an unannounced first person shooter project. The job listings give a little bit of information about the project, especially the position of Gameplay Engineer, which requires proficiency in Unreal Engine 3 and UnrealScript.

It's unknown what this project is about (although I don't think it's a stretch to say it probably has to do with Star Wars), but it would seem that LucasArts still intends to put its contract for the Unreal Engine 3 to use. The project Clint Hocking was working on before he left LucasArts was said to use the Unreal Engine 3, but it's unknown whether or not this is the same project.

Source: Joystiq

It is being widely reported that high-profile LucasArts employee Clint Hocking (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Far Cry 2) has left LucasArts.

What this means for the unannounced project he was working on is anyone's guess, but given LucasArts' track record we can probably expect a wave of redundancies to follow.

1up has published an exaltation of the iMUSE system, particular its pioneering use in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. And it's hard to discount the truth the writer arrives at with this statement:

You probably don't need any education about iMUSE, but read the article anyway.

Source: 1up

I mean, there's apparently several. There's this replica of the game's intro made, natch, by some German dude:

And there's this one, too:

Source: Youtube

Source: Youtube

... and it has the potential not to suck? Maybe?

More news will be released at E3, but with keywords like "bounty hunter", "mature", and "action adventure" we will give 1313 the benefit of the doubt. For now. Go read the press release and make up your own mind.

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Based on an invitation they extended to EGM, LucasArts will have at least one new game to show off at E3 this year. So what will it be? The perennially greenlit-and-then-cancelled Battlefront III? The aerial combat game implied by some job listings some time ago? Might we finally begin seeing some sort of video game shaped consequences of the "We hired Clint Hocking" and "We've licensed the Unreal 3 engine" announcements from like, well over a year ago?

I dunno, but even money says whatever it is will be unworthy of my time Star Wars-related. Not that it's the only thing you have to look forward to from LEC; as we told you a few weeks back, they're planning on issuing a re-release of the first two Knights of the Old Republic games sometime this year. And thank goodness, right? God knows there aren't oodles of less readily available games from their prestigious catalog that people would care to see back in circulation over a hidden gem like KOTOR.

Thanks to Threepwood4life for the heads up. Poor sap thinks people still read the forums!

JP Update: Gamezone is reporting that a 'first look' of this new Star Wars franchise will screen on GTTV on May 31, with gameplay footage to be shown on June 6th.

Source: EGM

There's some new Star Wars game rumors floating around. First of all, Siliconera noticed that Lucasfilm registered a trademark for Star Wars 1313, for use for video games. The fact that a game was registered by Lucasfilm rather than LucasArts isn't unusual. Lucasfilm also registered the trademark for The Force Unleashed in 2006. GameSpy suggests that the Star Wars 1313 may be a game about Boba Fett, because Boba Fett apparently used CT-1313 as an alias in a Star Wars novel.

The second rumor concerns re-releases rather than new games. Apparently a pre-order for a Knights of The Old Republic I & II bundle for PC has popped up all over at places like Newegg.com J&R Electronics, and Smart Game Shopper. The latter has the release scheduled as 6/27/2012, but considering the (lack of) reliability of release dates by retailers, I'd take that release date with a grain of salt.

What game is being referred to here? I'm going to assume that middle finger means "just tell me" - it's Star Wars: Battlefront III.

Yes, the oft-cancelled sequel to the lucrative shooter franchise is back in the headlines yet again thanks to a juicy interview between GamesIndustry International and Steve Ellis, co-founder of Free Radical, that sheds a little more light on how the relationship ended, and apparently it wasn't pretty.

It turns out the game was nearly finished and the publisher-developer relationship didn't sour until the arrival of that destructive force that dooms even Star Wars projects, a management shift.

The whole sordid affair, as well as more insider tales from Free Radical's storied history, can be found in the full interview.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Several years back - I think it was somewhere around December 10th, 2005 - we spread the good word about a book called Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, a detailed, acclaimed, behind-the-scenes look at various technology companies of the George Lucas empire. At the time, author Michael Rubin had put up the book's eighteenth chapter, a fascinating examination of the early days of Lucasfilm Games, up on his blog.

Now we receive word that the book has recently gotten a Kindle re-release. If you've ever had any interest in the genesis of companies like LucasArts, Pixar, and Industrial Light and Magic (or if, to put it a simpler way, you read Mojo), Rubin's insider look at the story behind them is by all accounts compelling stuff. Check out the new digital release or stick with the easier-to-cuddle analog version, if you prefer.

And maybe stay tuned for a review of Droidmaker from us sometime in the future. Who knows, crazier things have happened.

Remember that Monkey Island 2: Special Edition E3 trailer that ended with a surprise 3D twist that had us all talking? Here, refresh your memory:

The 3D stuff was the work of Blur Studio, and one of the artists involved has offered a closer look of the Guybrush and LeChuck models on his blog. The blog post is apparently a year old, but judging from the attention this has been getting on the Telltale forums, it hasn't been seen by many.

Source: Juan Solís García's blog

So there's this web show called "Matt Chat," a production of Armchair Arcade in which video game people of interest are interviewed via webcam. I've been alerted to two recent Matt Chat interviews of interest to our Objective.

First up is an interview with the legendary David Fox, creator of Zak McKracken:

And here's one with George "Fat Man" Sanger, consummate audio guru from LEC and Humongous' glory days:

Some great stories to be heard there. And both of these interviews are apparently the first of multiple installments, so stay tuned.

Source: Armchair Arcade

When assaulted with contemporary games that are aggressively mediocre, it is understandable that Star Wars fans would prefer to reminisce about the halcyon days when, say, the Super Star Wars trilogy for the SNES was proffering some highly decent side-scrolling translations of the classic movies.

The folks at NowGamer were struck by such nostalgia and were inspired to write a feature about these 16-bit gems, and what really makes it awesome is that they thought to pursue the games' producer and lead designer Kalani Streicher for some reflections. As a result the article contains all sorts of great background info, and Streicher even expresses the desire to return to the series some kind of way, if LEC would ever be interested. Take a look.

Source: NowGamer