Dining With Developers, Vol. 2: Haden Blackman, Part 1
4/16/2009 7:17 PM | 7 Comments | Page 5 of 8
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Lucas: And badmouthing LucasArts must be some kind of career suicide.
Kahn: And the interesting thing is, that wasn't the first time that some artist, or someone on a team that had a project canceled, suddenly feels like they're allowed to reveal everything in the world. You're right, what in the world are these people thinking?
Lucas: Where does George fit into all of this? How much influence did he have on
The Force Unleashed?
Blackman: We don't go to George with a blank canvas. We bring him something and say, "So this is what we're thinking about doing from a story standpoint. What do you think?" And he massages it.
Jones: That's right. George makes decisions like, "Let's call this guy Jett Brody."
[Note: George infamously is credited for changing the main character's name in Fracture to "Jett Brody."]
[Laughs]
Blackman: I'm glad I'm only on my first beer.
[More laughs]
Narcisse: BioWare is obviously doing the Knights of the Old Republic MMO. How involved are you in that?
Blackman: On a high level. We've seen builds, and talked to the producers, and looked over some design documents. And I know a lot of the BioWare guys because I worked on the original
Knights of the Old Republic a bit.
Lucas: You're kind of a creative director at this point.
Blackman: I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that.
Lucas: It sounds like you're involved in a lot of projects.
Blackman: You know, I've been at LucasArts for 12 years, and my role has changed quite a bit in that time. I did some Voice Directing for awhile. I did some writing. There was one point where I wrote some press releases.
[Laughter] Long before you started
[to Kahn]. I'm sure they're terrible. I've written marketing material. But that's all in my past.
The Force Unleashed was really my only focus the past couple years.
Lucas: Is that your baby more than any of the other games you've been a part of?
Blackman: Probably, yes. Because we built the team from scratch. I don't want to take credit for coming up with the vision of the game, because it was certainly a collaborative effort. But I was the one that championed it. I was the one who had to stand in front of the team during the darkest days and say, "We can do this. This is going to be the game; we can do this; it's going to be great." So I feel like it's my baby in a lot of ways.
Narcisse: Star Wars has some of the most passionate fans in the world. They're never going to stop asking questions, like when is there going to be another bounty hunter game, when is there going to be another X-Wing game. How do you answer those questions?
Blackman: We know we have a rich legacy of original IPs, and a rich legacy of Star Wars franchises too, like Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic, X-Wing, Jedi Knight and now
The Force Unleashed. So we're always looking for an opportunity for these things. Where does it make sense to bring them up again? At the same time, we want to make sure the games are all as good as we can make them. We don't want to have five or six Star Wars titles a year, because that's just too many.
