The kind of money Disney will want for a Star Wars license really limits who'll be in the running.
It'll pretty much be the big publishers, EA, Actibliz, Squenix, Ubisoft, Sega, no actual developers have the kind of money Disney will be demanding (maybe Zenimax/Valve/Epic do, but as if they'll go for a Star Wars game). None of them will do anything odd, risky or adventurous, doubly so after TOR has tanked.
Of course, if Disney announce that they're funding an Obsidian developed game, with the option for two more if the first sells, that would be interesting.
Well, I haven't been any kind of fan to the work they've been putting out (or in most cases, haven't been putting out). So I can't see it getting much worse. Not really. LucasArts has been crapping on their IPs for the past decade. It's shocking to see what a once great company can do to their own IPs.
It also isn't the job of the developers to buy these games. It's the job of a publisher to buy the IP and then to hire a development studio to develop it. I'm not sure why you'd want such a large IP to necessarily be in the hands of an indie studio.
It's the job of a publisher to buy the IP and then to hire a development studio to develop it. I'm not sure why you'd want such a large IP to necessarily be in the hands of an indie studio.
Because based on the last couple of years, games funded by major publishers are all the same, short, forgettable, full of micro transactions and unprofitable!
If they plan on doing something like the Marvel films, I can maybe see it working. If the films are all interlinked but are at the same time separate films and not just sequel after sequel, I can see it working as long as they get some decent people helming it.
So basically they're doing with movies what we've been doing with Star Wars EU books for the last 30 or so years? I'm optimistic about the whole thing tbh. I've been reading a lot of old Star Wars comics lately and some of the story arcs would be great movies. Star Wars is a franchise these days and not a series so it's similar to how there're something like 50 Final Fantasy titles but they typically don't overlap and sometimes have cameos from other games without totally rupturing canon. (Cloud from FFVII in Tactics and Dissidia for example)
Edit: Come to think of it, we have yearly Marvel movies so what's the difference?
Did you really just suggest that it takes about the same amount of time to make a book as it does to make a movie? Would you like to refine that statement?
As for the Final Fantasy situation: Final Fantasy isn't a shared universe. Each of the stories of Final Fantasy are distinct, and most have no overlap whatsoever. You cannot have that many world-ending catastrophes and still have a population left at all. Star Wars has continuity. I don't think there's any comparison to be made here.
I said nothing about the time, only that they can cherry pick from a rich lore and make a STORY out of anything they want to. Of course it'll take longer to make a movie but I never argued time, only creative direction. On time; why are people thinking that these movies are going to be made back to back as opposed to having multiple projects with different directors and staff going on simultaneously? I'll counter-point you one, are YOU suggesting the only Star Wars movies have to be related to the Lucas works? There's a PLETHORA of times and stories they could make movies out of. This right now is off the top of my head
2015: Episode 7
2016: Origin of the Je'daii Order
2017: The Old Republic part 1
2018: Episode 8
2019: Boba Fett oneshot movie (works for Wolverine)
2020: The Old Republic part 2
2021: The Force Schism (Jedi and Sith split)
2022: Episode 9
2023: Random movie involving Jedi set thousands of years before Episode 1 and thousands of years after the Old Republic that impacts both storylines in no damned way whatsoever
2024: Random movie set between Episodes 3 and 4 with Vader wrecking Jedi who evaded Order 66 and Obi-Wan on the run
There, I just gave you a decade worth of movies freshly pulled out of my clenched butt-cheeks.
Edit: Here I'll do it again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_comic_books Print that out and throw 10 darts (rethrow for existing movies), you've just made another decade's worth of movies on top of my decade.
I don't really fully understand the argument, Disney over the last several years has put out a lot of good stuff, and not just "fo da kiddies!" things either, however people still seem to believe that Disney is still for under 12's only. I see people cry over the loss of Lucas Arts, claiming Disney is the new EA. Do people really know what Lucas Arts did? They actually did not make many of the games people remember them for, the last game Lucas Arts actually developed was Lucidity back in 2009 for Xbox360. If you want to look at Co-Developed games you can go to their last title, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 in 2010 which if I recall correctly, was not well received.
When people think about Lucas Arts, they say things like KOTOR (2003), Battlefront (2004), and Jedi Knight 2/Jedi Academy (2002, 2003). KOTOR was developed by Bioware, Battlefront was made Pandemic not Lucas Arts, and Jedi Knight was made by Raven Software and Vicarious Visions.
Do people really miss Lucas Arts as a company? or as an icon. Do they really miss the Lucas Arts developed games like Republic Commando (2005), Gladius (2003), and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2002)? Or do people just miss seeing the 'Gold Guy' logo come up before a Star Wars title. I do not understand why people cry foul at George Lucas for 'Ruining' Star Wars, yet absolutely refuse to have someone else take a shot at it, despite that 'person' having been responsible for the biggest multi movie tie-in, The Avengers, and really showing people that Comic characters are not just for geeks.
You really seem to be shooting at a straw man here (or just projecting so hard that you can show off Powerpoints). I fail to see relevance Lucas Arts (not Lucas Film) has to do with a discussion about the Star Wars film series. In regards to your comments though, they did fund and publish those games, as well as license the IP out to competent developers. That was a smart move that everybody benefited from.
Your last paragraph is both factually wrong and incredibly smug. I enjoy the prequel trilogy flaws and all and I accept that people hate them for those same flaws. But even with those (in some cases) crippling flaws, it was ultimately George Lucas's story to tell and instead of exploiting the brand by pumping out new films every couple of years he let it rest.
The fear with Disney is that they are going to simply pump out sequel's or remakes for money, not because some had a story they wanted to tell or an idea they wanted to explore. It's something Disney's good at, they've done it with almost all of their famous animated films. Joss Whedon is not making the new Star Wars film, J.J. Abrams is, the same person who made Lost, Super 8, and the new Star Trek. Going beyond that, merely assuming that because a director worked on a film you liked that any and all of their work will be good is incredibly naive. Coppola made One From the Heart, Lucas made Attack of the Clones, and Shyamalan made every movie after the Sixth Sense.
I love it.
I'd rather have the option to see more of a world that I like than have no option at all.
I only enjoyed Episode 1 out of the original trilogy but that was enough to justify their existence.
With a little luck, one of the newer movies might be watchable as well.
If they aren't, I'll always have Episodes 4, 5 and to a lesser degree 1, 6.
It seems to me like the'll be doing the same thing with Star Wars that they already are doing with Marvel. Yearly releases of spinoffs/standalone films setting up to a bigger film tying them together every few years, a la The Avengers. So far that's worked out fantastically for Marvel. I know I like it. And as far as I know, no one has ever complained about Marvel's yearly movies. (But that might be because most people see each character as their own franchise, instead of as part of the larger Marvel universe).
I'll watch the first one an decide from there. That strategy worked for the second (first (non-original)) trilogy, first film was terrible so I avoided the others like the plague, then watched them when they came on TV and felt smug at having not wasted money on them. Maybe Disney will do right by Yoda and not make the franchise any worse. But I do have the horrible feeling that it will end up as a musical for kids with Justin Beiber, Hannah Montana and Goofy as new Jedi.
It sounds like they're trying to milk the franchise for all the money they can get instead of giving Star Wars the effort it deserves. I'm now not going to watch these new movies even more than I was already not going to watch them.
It doesn't bother me how often they release them. Even if you space out your movies by a few years, a shit movie is a shit movie. Can't polish a turd. If they can contract capable story tellers to put out something decent every year, and maybe something spectacular every few years, that's fine by me. As long as they keep Lucas' ideas at a distance they can't be THAT bad, surely.
What I'm hoping to see is a bunch of directors that grew up with and loved the original trilogy, coupled with great writers that a) understand the source material, and b) can do something cool with it. That way there's a good chance of getting a new Star Wars movie that FEELS like Star Wars. The positive side to this is that there's likely DOZENS of competent directors out there that fit the bill, and probably wrote their own crappy fan fiction as children.
So yeah, as long as Disney hands the reigns over to someone that actually wants to make a Star Wars film, as opposed to someone that's merely capable of making a Star Wars film, I have a good feeling.
When I saw the thread I had to keep telling myself it wasn't a news article, and then the bbc had to piss all over my dream world.
OT: At first I was incredibly horrified, but movie design schedules are different than game schedules, so we'll just have to see how this turns out I guess.
Because based on the last couple of years, games funded by major publishers are all the same, short, forgettable, full of micro transactions and unprofitable!
The unprofitable part is because there are several large publishers who decided to hire their inept nephews (who I assume couldn't hold down their jobs at McDonald's) to be in the profit forcasting department of marketing. The entirely inept employees then look at whatever COD did and immediately grabbed their crayons to base their forecasted revenue on COD's profits and then say that's how much they should make on a totally unrelated game to a totally different market segment. The out-of-touch upper managmenet then looks at those numbers and say, "Uh... that looks right, I guess. Good job Timmy, here's some candy." and then proceed to lay out an insanely high budget based on unrealistic forecasted returns. Then, when reality doesn't match up with the magic numbers, the management is let go and maybe that inept nephew gets left behind. Any argument
Now then,
Firstly I fail to see how profitability is our concern. Failing to turn a profit did not make Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, or Hitman any less memorable. If anything, them being so dumb as to pour too much money into them just made the games better for the end user. Yes, that's bad in the long run for the IP but I don't really want another Mario that keeps getting rehashed for decades.
Secondly, I understand that the indie market has put some games out that have been unique and truly memorable lately. That's great but that's not what the next Battlefront needs. In order to accomplish the scale and quality of the kind of game it is they'll need to have legitimate funds and a legitimate development team. You're right that most developers aren't big enough to do that by themselves, and that's exactly why you shouldn't be hoping for a small developer to get this kind of game. I'd like to see a small development company get the rights to do something else/new with the Star Wars IP in general, but they shouldn't be able to get their hands on something like this.
Thirdly, Microtransactions don't typically ruin triple AAA games. True microtransactions ruin free to play games. The articles against it here on the Escapist are over-the-top against it because it's such a crummy practice. Take EA for example, they put out Mass Effect 3 and all the bitching was about the ending, not the microtransactions despite microtransactions being EA's bread and butter.
Lastly, Memorableness, I'm calling shenanigans on that. Let's take a look at the big games of 2012 and see who published them (no particular order):
1. Dishonored: Arkane Studios developed, published by Bethesda.
2. Halo 4: Developed by 343 Industries, published by Microsoft.
3. Assassin's Creed 3: Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Published by Ubisoft.
4. COD Black Ops 2: Developed by Treyarch, published by Activision
5. Borderlands 2: Developed by Gearbox, published by 2k Games.
6. XCOM Enemy Unknown: Developed by Firaxis Games, published by 2k Games
7. Mass Effect 3: Developed by BioWare, published by EA.
8. Kingdoms of Amalur Recokoning: Developed by Big Huge Games/38 Studios who were helped by EA to finish publishing the game.
9. Farcry 3: Developed/Published by Ubisoft.
10. Max Payne 3: Developed by Rockstar Studios, Published by Rockstar Games.
11. Darksiders II: Developed by Vigil Games, Published by THQ studios (the IP now belongs to someone else)
12. JOurney: Developed by Thatgamecompany, published by Sony.
13. Diablo III: Blizzard (ruined by the first attempt at an online auction house)
Smaller budget games that still got mentioned by year end:
1. The Walking Dead: Telltale Games (Haha, they were owned by LucasArts until 2004 when they cancelled a major game TellTale was working on, you should think of Telltale as the best part of LucasArts having been cut off but still living and growing. They aren't a super small company though, they've got some legitimate inflow of cash).
2. Torchlight II: Runic Games (They've only been around since 2008, holy crap on a cracker, but note that Runic Games was created after the fall of FLagship Studios Perfect World Entertainment bought into Runic Games as a majority stake holder so...)
3. Dear Esther: Thechineseroom
4. FTL, Faster Than Light: Subset Games
5. Fez: Polytron
6. Hotline Miami: Dennaton Games
So, if you clicked the spoiler you real realise that LOTS of money means big/flashy environments and some of the most memorable games of the year. Not lots of money means less complex games but not necessarily less memorable stories. But tell me, do you want the kind of limited gameplay for Battlefront that the smaller companies allow or do you want the big expansive gameplay that the AAA team brings to the table? Keep in mind, I'm talking about a successor to Battlefront, not a completely new game based on the StarWars IP. I mean, I would love someone like Telltale getting a swing at their own little corner of the StarWars Universe. But large Battlefront-like game developers they are not.
Don't forget, LucasArts had been supposedly working on Battlefront III since 2006 (definitely 2008). So... Duke Nukem forever anyone? The game was supposedly completed in 2008 but LucasArts couldn't be bothered to spend big on it if GameSpot's interviewee was telling the truth. A LucasArts employee responded back claiming that Free Radical (the developer) regularly missed deadlines and didn't create a legitimate game. LucasArts was apparently developing it again in secrete under the codename "Version Two": http://kotaku.com/the-last-months-of-lucasarts-472038151
So the question is, do you really think your IP was in better hands when it was in a studio that fumbled it around for 7 years including allowing a completely unreleased failure of a game 5 years ago?
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