Electronic Arts = Hard Pass
They literally are.
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Never tell me the odds!
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The odds of EA successfully releasing a competent video game are approximately 3,720 to 1
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If you want scientific plausibility of any sort from Star Wars - well, that ship sailed long ago. And it left contrails.
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I don’t really understand why Disney wants the game license to be exclusive, it seem so counter-intuitive. LucasArts had different studios developing games for them, and we got what is apparently now the Golden Age of Star Wars games during that time: X-Wing/TIE series, Rogue Squadron series, Dark Forces series, Knights of the Old Republic series, original Battlefront series…compare that to the last 10 years: Battlefront I and II, Fallen Order, and handful of mobile games. Wooo. I suppose I should include The Old Republic, but that was before EA got its grubby hands on the whole cookie jar.
Add in EA’s insistence that no one wants story-driven single-player games, and it makes even less sense. Why limit something people want to love to one shitty company with a shitty take on how to make games?
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Disney doesn’t seem particularly interested in undertaking the kind of development oversight that LucasArts managed. They opt out of that by contracting with EA to handle the license for them, then EA contracts out to their stable of developers instead of Disney having to manage those agreements, pitches, and development cycle processes directly.
I’m not sure there’s actually an existing model of a large IP owner like this handling the video game license rights fantastically well. LucasArts is an example of doing it all in-house, but even they started producing duds as game development got larger and more convoluted and they shifted to publishing rather than developing. I get the distinct sense that Disney in particular has no desire to get their fingers into the sphere directly when they can pay an industry insider juggernaut corporation to do it for them… they’ve dabbled in licensing properties for games before but never seemed enthused about it. If Star Wars didn’t have such a rich video game history, we’d probably see even fewer games with it in this era.
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Disney has always had a really weird relationship with games. And it shows when you think about “Disney Games”. Their hey day was essentially the Genesis and SNES days. The only other major thing going on there is Kingdom Hearts, and the story there is as much about how the fuck did that happen as anything else.
A few years before the Lucasfilm acquisition Disney had announced that it would be restructuring it’s gaming efforts to focus on mobile and free to play games. Citing how profitable that had been for [list of Chinese companies]. Then there was the whole Epic Mickey thing, where the line was that Disney was going to become one of the largest companies in video games, and that sure as shit went nowhere. After that they were pack to pointing at the money shit like the Simpson mobile game was making. And that’s right about when they bought Lucasfilm.
It just doesn’t seem like anyone in leadership at Disney really has any concept of what the games business is. So lacking some one who cares they sort of resort of bottom line, money lives here logic. And FTP and mobile has a pretty clear log line on a profit statement.
MEANWHILE Lucasarts itself was not in great shape at the time. It wasn’t just that they were one of the largest and most financially solvent publisher in early gaming, especially on PC. They were also one of the best regarded in house developers through the early 00’s. You’re forgetting about Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, all those original non-Star Wars games.
But in the lead up to the Disney buy out? All of their key talent had spent years jumping ship. They hadn’t shipped an in house developed product in almost a decade. And their two biggest things as a publisher and licenser were the ever not quite successful KOTOR MMO and the Lego Star Wars games. I meant look at the list from 08 to the Disney buyout. Do we really need to talk about Kinect dance and karaoke games? Every classic title you list was behind them by the mid 00’s. And there hadn’t been much non-Star Wars since the 90’s.
So you’ve got a Disney that recently either failed at, or forgot about their major, internal, AAA video games push.
And the celebrated publisher and developer they just bought for oodles of money. Just isn’t anymore. There’s nobody there to build, or even rebuild, a major Disney gaming initiative. The only thing still working is the licensing arm.
And EA walks in and tells them what they want to hear. We have all these guys what made the best Star Wars Games. All the money is in mobile and FTP mechanics, look at how much our sports franchises make. Noone wants narrative single player. Games as SEEEEEEERRRRRRVVVVVVIIIIICCCCCCEEEEE.
Problem solved right? Who wouldn’t sign up!
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That’s good, because Star Wars is a children’s movie.
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Gameplay trailer is out now:
Full single-player campaign, and the multiplayer modes have options to play with and against AIs instead of having to deal with matchmaking.
Honestly, I’m pretty sold at this point. Still not pre-ordering, but it’s wishlisted. As long as the reviews indicate that it’s good and not laden with lootbox BS for gameplay essentials, I’m in.
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Wasn’t there some line in the gameplay trailer about “unlock everything just by playing the game?” That’s a good sign anyway. I wonder if the console versions will have flightstick support.
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