LucasArts spent a year and a half secretly creating a single Star Wars gaming universe from 4 projects
Former developer of LucasArts studio Brooks Brown on the All Of Us podcast revealed details of the large-scale canceled initiative to create a single game universe Star Wars The concept arose after Paul Meegan, who previously headed the Epic China division and participated in the integration of the online shooter Dust 514 with the space MMO EVE Online, took over as president of the company. Based on this experience, Meegan proposed linking several multi-genre games in the George Lucas universe into one living system with a common dynamic economy.
The project was entrusted to a small internal team led by Brooks Brown and lead technical specialist Ruslan Abdikeev. The team developed a space simulator Smuggler for iPad tablets, created in the image and likeness of the cult game Freelancer. At the same time, the Singapore branch of LucasArts was creating a city-planning simulator with farming elements, focused on the production of resources and the development of planetary settlements.
The overall ecosystem also included 2 more large projects for personal computers and consoles. The studio designed a large-scale competitive shooter designed to reboot the Battlefront franchise, as well as a global space strategy in the 4X format. The key mechanics of the unification was the end-to-end exchange of resources. The materials obtained in the mobile simulator influenced the trade routes of smugglers in Smuggler, and global combat operations in the shooter and decisions in the strategy changed the balance of power on the sectoral map of the galaxy.
The production of the ambitious cross-platform metaverse lasted 1.5 years with the involvement of several studios. As part of this development, engineers for the first time in the history of LucasArts carried out deep integration of the Unreal Engine engine into the company's mobile and internal technological processes.However, the entire production cycle suddenly ended on 1 day when senior management, without prior warning, decided to close all 4 projects at the same time.
According to Brown, the closure of such a large-scale idea did not come as a shock to the team due to the destructive work environment that reigned in the company for many years before its absorption by the media giant Disney.
Everyone who worked at LucasArts, especially in the last 5-10 years of the studio's existence, assumed in advance that any project could simply be closed on any day. It was more of a feeling of surviving one more day than anything more.
- Brooks Brown, former LucasArts
Shortly after the cancellation of the single universe, Lucasfilm, along with all its assets, was sold to Disney for $4.05 billion. The new owners disbanded the studio LucasArts in the spring of 2013, finally curtailing all remaining internal game development, including the dark action game Star Wars 1313.