Dining With Developers, Vol. 2: Haden Blackman, Part 1
4/16/2009 7:17 PM | 7 Comments | Page 4 of 8
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
If, again hypothetically, we were to do another game, there would be more material transformation. We experimented with melting doors and things like that, but we could just never get it working right. But now I'm confident that we could, because we know so much more about the technology.
Jones: Making a Star Wars-related game, you're really in the crucible. It's really a losing proposition. You're getting shit from the fan side; you're getting pressure from trying to live up to this incredible precedent.
Narcisse: The panini press.
Jones: Yes, the panini press. And to come up with something that's not only "good," but something that exceeds everyone's expectations, that's an achievement.
Blackman: Thanks.
Narcisse: Fracture, the other big LucasArts release from last year, which was developed by Day 1 Studios, was kind of middling. You have already have such rich IPs internally; does it really make sense to, you know, make stuff up?
Blackman: I think there's always to be a mix of internal and external development. If somebody comes to us with a really great IP, and we think we can help make it better, if we think there's a good game in there, I don't think we'd turn them down just because it's a new IP. And we love all the old LucasArts stuff, like
Full Throttle and
Monkey Island. You're right, we've got some really great titles.
Lucas: By the way, those games would be great on the DS and the iPhone, by the way. I'm just saying.
Blackman: [Looks at Kahn] I'm going to stop talking now.
[Laughs]
Lucas: I want to talk about the time period right around when all the negative buzz was coming out about company layoffs. There was speculation about the
Force Unleashed team being gutted.
Blackman: It was hard. We had a turbulent year. LucasArts made a lot of changes. It was a really tough time; I'm not going to lie.
[The waiter arrives, delivering cheddar and rosemary cheese puffs. Compliments of the chef.]
Lucas: Did you lose a lot of people?
"Man, that has to be the worst rendition of The Robot I have ever seen."
We didn't lose a lot of people. It wasn't like everyone who worked on
The Force Unleashed got laid off. Some people who worked on
The Force Unleashed are no longer with the company. But it wasn't the whole team. Certainly we were able to get the DLC done, and the other things that needed to be done in the studio. The day that those changes happened was easily the most difficult day of my professional career, because people who I worked with, who bled for
The Force Unleashed, who did a great job -- we had to make some really tough business decisions, unfortunately.
Kahn: Someone came out in the press and said that they'd worked at LucasArts for 15 years or however long, and that basically, from what they knew,
The Force Unleashed was going to have trouble getting finished.
Blackman: Whenever you hear that stuff, it's unfortunate. We've been really lucky the past couple years at LucasArts. There haven't been a lot of leaks.
