Let me just start by saying that Disney can do whatever they want with Star Wars, they are the legal owners of Lucasfilm and all it's Intellectual Properties. They can license Star Wars to whoever they want. This is one fan's perspective who's played a multitude of Star Wars games over the years.My Background with Star Wars Games:I was born in 2000 so I was too young to get deep into the prequels when they came out in theaters. Around the time of Revenge of the Sith there had been a slew of games already released like KOTOR 1 and 2 (2003 and 2004), Battlefront 1 and 2 (2004 and 2005), Republic Commando (2004), Empire at War (2006), Lego Star Wars 1 and 2 (2005 and 2006), so on and so forth. This was during a time when Lucasfilm made license deals with many developers through Lucasfilm's publisher Lucasarts. Because of all these developers players would get unique perspectives on the SW universe or get a fun interpretation of already established stories from the Movies. Later on Lucasfilm moved on from the Prequel movies to the Clone Wars TV show spawning games like Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels, Republic Heroes, and Clone Wars Adventures. While looking back I don't even know how I had fun playing Republic heroes at all and Lightsaber duels just not being all that great either, it at least gave the player a new story or a new way to interact in the SW universe. But aside from the games based on the TV and Lucasfilm having a more "Prequel-era" Focus, we got the Force Unleashed (2008). The Force Unleashed was a game 8 year-old me never thought I wanted but after playing the first mission with Vader on Kashyyyk I fell in love with this game's interpretation of the Force and how you can just clean house like it's nobody's business. After that Star Wars games just kind of went down a slippery slope with Force Unleashed 2 (2011) while fun was criminally short and was basically a DLC for the 1st game and Kinect Star Wars (2012), we just won't get into that.Disney's Acquisition of the Star Wars IP:Like many others I was disappointed to hear that Disney would be shutting down Lucasarts and cancelling SW:1313 after we were teased with one gameplay trailer and a story concept. All games previous to Disney's acquisition were decanonized, and Disney was left with a clean slate. Disney knew they would be making more films, a new TV show by having the people who worked on Clone Wars work on their new show, and have new comic books by Marvel (which Disney previously owned) and novels. Traditionally Disney was a Movie-centric business. They did have Disney Interactive as a Game studio but it would soon close down. So where could new Star Wars games be developed? Playing it safe, Disney gave the full Star Wars video game license to Electronic Arts (EA).EA and the Star Wars License:Whether you like it or not, EA is an experienced game publishing company that has game franchises like FIFA, Madden, Dead Space, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Crysis, and Need for Speed. So ideally you would expect big budget Star Wars Games being developed right? Well yes and sometimes no. Yes because you had Battlefronts 1 and 2 being developed by DICE and Visceral developing their now cancelled "Uncharted" Style game. No because as previously mentioned, the game was cancelled and Visceral was shut down. So what was left? Well you have SW: The Old Republic an MMO still being updated and running even before and the Disney acquisition, the MOBA Mobile Game "Force Arena", a mobile turn-based RPG "Galaxy of Heroes", and the rebooted Battlefronts 1 and 2. The Battlefront games, even the old ones, traditionally were tie-ins for the Star Wars movie coming out that year or time frame(OG Battlefronts for ROTS, EA BF1-TFA, EA BF2-TLJ). Upon release Battlefront 2015 was heavily criticized for having no single-player story, a severe lack of content without forking over $50, lack of content from the Clone Wars, so and so forth. Despite all the criticisms, the game sold about 12.5 million copies (according to VG Chartz) across all platforms. Fast-forward to 2017, Battlefront 2 comes out amidst the lootbox controversy leading to an outraged game community and government investigation. The game would be criticized heavily for it's use of lootboxes as well as a falsely-advertised and (imo) not well written campaign and a slow-drip feed of small content drops. At E3 2018 we were given the announcement of a new Star Wars game by Respawn entertainment however the announcement was viewed by many as lack luster given the fact it wasn't even announced on stage with a logo, it was announced by a developer in the audience. However, personally I'm interested in the premise of the game.The State of the Games compared to the Rest of the Franchise:Ok so the video game portion of the franchise isn't doing so hot right now, but what about the other parts of the franchise? Lucasfilm has been pushing for one movie a year with a Saga film one year and an Anthology movie the next. Lucasfilm animation has been keeping up with always developing episodes for TV series and even brought back a fan-favorite series. Marvel has been churning out comic books for multiple Star Wars comic series. Books are doing fine as well. Then you got the multitude of toys and tabletop board games coming out. From the time EA has had the Star Wars License starting in 2013, there have been only two high-profile games not released consecutively both receiving mixed reception or bad press and then another game announced.What could Disney do to strengthen Star Wars on the Video Game Front?:After the EA exclusivity deal is up, I would recommend signing with multiple publishers/developers or at least not restrict the exclusivity to one publisher. There is a huge sect of Star Wars fans that got introduced into the franchise through the games or their love for the franchise was strengthened with the huge variety of games that released prior to EA's acquisition.Final Note:This is not an attack or threat to EA/DICE/Bioware employees/developers, those guys made some of my favorite games like Battlefield 3/4 and i'm confident that if they divert enough resources, manpower, time, and back off on the greedy business practices, they can make the Star Wars license worthwhile for them instead of it sitting there and being neglected.I kinda felt like I needed to address this so perhaps by some chance someone at Disney/Lucasfilm can acknowledge the feedback or at least start a conversation in the community. What were the Star Wars games that got you into the franchise or made you like Star Wars more. Feel free to post. via /r/StarWars https://ift.tt/2vVZSrZ
No comments:
Post a Comment