For many days during this year, I’ve often sat and pondered the changes that have occurred in our industry since I first started gaming. Industry leaders change, talent moves around, new series rise to prominence and sometimes fall from grace after overexposure. New technology is often the catalyst of many such changes; look at what the rise of the HD consoles has done to the Japanese development scene. With the first rumblings this week about the successors to the Wii and PlayStation 3, I can’t help but wonder what the next formats will offer, and what direction the industry will take.

This week The Warp Pipe looks back on how LucasArts transformed itself from one of the most innovative developers in the industry to the unfortunate place it is today.

LucasArts: A Fall from Grace

In the games industry, we see a lot of unfortunate events happen – just look at the recent closure of Ensemble, a developer responsible for one of the best selling real time strategy games suddenly closed with very little in the way of meaningful justification. For me, one of the hardest things to watch has been the disintegration of LucasArts.

LucasArts produced some amazing games in their golden years

The early days of LucasArts were marked by innovation. Their earliest efforts as Lucasfilm Games were technically impressive for the hardware available and the time (using internally developed fractal technology), and featured unique approaches to gameplay. LucasArts rode the wave of success on the back of a number of highly original adventure games. Unlike the majority of main competitor Sierra’s games, LucasArts adventure games were designed on the concept of no dead ends and no permanent deaths. Many titles were also focused on delivering irreverent humour, with many in-jokes and references to other LucasArts games and Lucasfilm franchises. From 1986 to 1995, LucasArts’ adventures such as Manic Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit the Road and The Secret of Monkey Island were phenomenally successful with audiences and critics, resting high above many all time greatest computer games lists.

The adventure game wasn’t LucasArts’ only asset. LucasArts tackled military simulations in the late 1980s, the most popular of which are Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. The trilogy of World War II flight sims were developed under the guise of Larry Holland, who would later form the studio Totally Games. LucasArts’ military sims were praised for their historical accuracy, and came packed to the brim with supplementary materials, making them fan favourites.

Their early Star Wars games were fantastic

LucasArts didn’t touch their hottest property, the Star Wars license, until the early 90s. A handful of Star Warsgames had hit the market by this time, but they were developed by other licensees, such as Atari. Larry Holland and his team led the charge with the brilliant X-Wing in 1993, a space simulator which dealt with a young rookie pilot’s involvement in the Rebel Alliance, from basic training up to the Battle of Yavin. The team took their technology from the World War II sims and applied it to Star Wars, and came up with the perfect combination of fantasy and reality.

Towards the middle of the 90s, LucasArts’ Star Wars efforts were driven by the best technology, and were almost always fantastic games. TIE Fighter took the ideas of X-Wing to the next level, improving the visuals and delivering even better mission designs and a decent story. Rebel Assault was the perfect demonstration for the multimedia capabilities of PCs at the time, even if it wasn’t much of a game. Dark Forces was LucasArts’ answer to Doom, and a more advanced game engine (allowing for jumping, room over room and mouselook), awesome level design and compelling gameplay saw it become one of the company’s most successful games.

Others, not so much

LucasArts’ action games only seemed to get better as the years went by. Jedi Knight was the first game that let you experience the true power of a Jedi, and was built on some pretty damn impressive technology and had some pretty cool live action scenes (though they’re pretty cheesy now). The game’s Deathmatch component was just as awesome as the single player mode. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter took the successful space simulations into the multiplayer arena, with a much needed visual upgrade.

Yet while the action games prevailed, LucasArts adventure games began to falter. Grim Fandango and the Curse of Monkey Island were received with almost unanimous praise, but this critical success did not transfer into sales, and the company virtually abandoned the genre that brought it to prominence.

It was around this time that LucasArts released their first less-than-stellar video game; Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64. Shadows was a massive companywide multimedia project intended to guage the success of the Star Wars franchise without releasing a new feature film. While the project was a success, and the game sold millions, it was not particularly well received by fans. The game attempted to do too much, offering vehicular combat and 3rd person action sequences, and succeeded at neither.

There’s still the odd good one, usually developed by someone else

The success of Shadows seemed to inspire the management at LucasArts to release more Star Wars games, regardless of their quality. Consoles received more attention than the PC, but the quality of the titles was just not up to the standard the company had achieved on the PC. Masters of the Teras Kasi, a ridiculous fighting game with more problems than a maths quiz, was the start of a torrent of crap Star Wars games. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Jedi Power Battles and Star Wars: Demolition were despised by critics, but continued to be lapped up by consumers. There was the odd decent release, like Rogue Squadron or Episode I Racer, but they were few and far between. The computer format continued to receive quality titles like Outlaws, Afterlife, X-Wing Alliance, but it too had its fair share of stinkers, like Force Commander and Rebellion.

LucasArts’ thirst for cutting edge technology seemed to be lost in this cavalcade of horrible games. For every good Star Wars game like Starfighter or Jedi Outcast, there was a Super Bombad Racing or an Obi Wan. Attempts were made to venture out of Lucasfilm licenses with Armed and Dangerous, Gladius, Wrath Unleashed and Secret Weapons over Normandy, but each title saw little success. It would not be until the 2005 release of Mercenaries that LucasArts would be associated with a new hit IP.

LucasArts’ future looks a little shaky

The company appears to be cutting back on internal development in favour of more lucrative publishing agreements. This has yielded both good (Knights of the Old Republic) and bad (Revenge of the Sith) titles. The future is not exactly promising either – The Force Unleashed has received mixed reviews, and Fracture looks like a gimmicky mess. It’s sad to see a company that was once a technology leader in this industry reduced to releasing such bland software. I place the blame on you, the consumer, for continuing to buy crappy Star Wars games long after the license had worn out its welcome. So long as people continue to buy less than stellar Star Wars games, LucasArts will continue to make them instead of trying to make something new and exciting.

A return to form for LucasArts is possible, but it’s a bit of a long shot. I personally think they should get the big cheese, George Lucas, to drop whatever celluloid crap he’s working on and start working on a game of his own creation. It’s the perfect medium for Lucas, who has been proven time and time again to be hopeless at directing humans and writing dialogue (case in point; Episodes I, II and III). Get the whole company behind interactive entertainment instead of film – it is the future of entertainment as we know it. I know I want to see company that has innovated cinematic technology for 30 years is capable of in the video game arena.