Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor, former video game developer and publisher, and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm.[2] It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.
Lucasfilm was wholly acquired by The Walt Disney Company in December 2012, and by April 2013, Disney had announced the shuttering of LucasArts in all but name, keeping the division around to handle licensing of Lucasfilm properties to third-party developers, primarily Electronic Arts (EA), and having any in-house development transferred to Disney Interactive Studios. Disney has, since 2021, revitalized the Lucasfilm Games brand as the licenser of all Lucasfilm-related properties.
History
Early history
In 1979, George Lucas wanted to explore other areas of entertainment and created the Lucasfilm Computer Division in 1979, which included a department for computer games (the Games Group) and another for graphics. The graphics department was spun off into its own corporation in 1986, ultimately becoming Pixar.[3]
The Lucasfilm Games Group originally cooperated with Atari, Inc., which helped fund the video game group's founding,[4] to produce video games. Though the group had spun out of Lucasfilm, the video game development license for Lucasfilm's Star Wars was held by Atari at the time, forcing the group to start with original concepts; Ron Gilbert, one of the group's first employees, believed that if the Lucasfilm Games Group had the rights for Star Wars from the start, they would have never branched into any new intellectual property.[5]
Logo
The original Lucasfilm Games logo was based upon the existing Lucasfilm movie logo, with a number of variations on it being used. This logo was later brought back when the Lucasfilm Games branding was revived in 2021. The long-lived LucasArts logo, affectionately known as the "Gold Guy", was introduced in 1990 and first used within Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (the first game shipped under the LucasArts name). The logo consisted of a crude gold-colored figure inspired by an Ancestral Puebloan petroglyph, standing on a purple letter "L" inscribed with the company name. The figure had its hands up in the air, as if a sun were rising from behind him. It was also said to resemble an eye, with the rays of the sun as eyelashes. The logo was revised in late 2005, losing the letter "L" pedestal and introducing a more rounded version of the gold-colored figure.[5] The last game to feature the original "Gold Guy" was Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, while the new logo was first seen in Star Wars: Battlefront II. In the games, the figure sometimes does an action like throw a lightsaber or cast Force Lightning. In 1998, LucasArts approached Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment, citing that their logo was copied from the top portion of the LucasArts logo, and threatened legal action.[105] Remedy was by that time already in the process of redesigning their logo, so it complied by taking its old logo offline from its website, and before introducing a new logo.[106]
Technology
The LucasArts Archives
The LucasArts Archives are a series of CD-ROM personal computer game re-releases and compilations from publisher LucasArts.
Later games published under the LucasArts Archives brand were budget-priced reissues of individual games, except for Monkey Island Archives, which was a compilation of The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, and The Curse of Monkey Island, released with The Curse of Monkey Island's box art.
Many of the games that were released in these Archive collections are not directly compatible with modern operating systems, but can still be played using the ScummVM software. The LucasArts Macintosh Archives Vol. I was the top-selling Macintosh game for March, April, and May 1997, selling over 15,000 units over those three months.[112]
- The LucasArts Archives Vol. I (1995)[107]
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle
Legacy
Ex-LucasArts developers have founded numerous San Francisco game development studios such as Double Fine Productions (2000), Telltale Games (2004), MunkyFun (2008), Dynamighty (2011), SoMa Play (2013), and Fifth Journey (2015) playing a significant role in the continued development of computer games in the Bay Area.
At the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony Computer Entertainment announced Grim Fandango Remastered, developed by Double Fine Productions as a console exclusive for PlayStation platforms.[113] It was released in 2015 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS.[114][115] During Sony
See also
- List of LucasArts games
- List of Star Wars games
External links
References
- Disney to Shut LucasArts Videogame Unit The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2013, retrieved April 18, 2013^
- LucasArts vet turns to Kickstarter to revive a 'Vampyre Story' Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2013, retrieved June 23, 2013^
- Hormby, Thomas. The Pixar Story: Fallon Forbes, Dick Shoup, Alex Schure, George Lucas and Disney