Over the past few days the internet has held a lot of resent over Disney for closing down LucasArts, which sure, for the loss of jobs it has caused is completely fair. This isn’t the reason most people are angry though, they are angry because the 21 year old company that they associate with Star Wars is gone.
This is not Disney’s fault though, they aren’t the bad guy here. Think for a second about what LucasArts has done recently – shit all. They had two of the biggest brands in the world and massive financial backing to create brilliance and become a license to print money but they blew it.
There was poor management, little to none internal development and projects were just abandoned when they were getting a little bit too hard which led to other people developing Star Wars games which was horrible on its own too (The Old Republic).
The mismanagement has led to LucasArts even failing at adapting to modern distribution methods like re-releasing their back catalogue on Steam and making titles for new mobile platforms.
LucasArt’s is no longer responsible for the Star Wars properties, and this is why it could be good. It is now in the hands of Disney, a company that knows very well what it is doing. Disney is a company who wants to make money, and companies who want to make money don’t just sit on projects, they turn them into things that will make money and it will do this by selling its properties to the best and highest bidding of game studios. There are some much better studios out there than LucasArts is right now, so when they get there hands on these titles we will see something great.
LucasArts was once a great game studio and it reminds me of Hashima, a Japanese island (You might know it from Skyfall). This island was once home to a prosperous coal factory and was a major help in Japan becoming the power it became but in 1974 the coal ran out, and the island was abandoned, turning into a ghost town. Just like the coal, the creativity and ideas have run out at LucasArts, there is nothing of value left, so Disney has now abandoned it.
