Disney Revives Lucasfilm Games

Can you feel it? There’s been a great disturbance in the Force. An ancient power has reawakened, with the potential to shake the very foundations of the galaxy. To be more specific, Syfy reveals that Disney has just revived Lucasfilm Games, a name that has dwelt in the shadows even before classics like Knights of the Old Republic or TIE FIGHTER hit PCs.

For younger audiences who are completely unfamiliar with the name, put on your history hats. Lucasfilm Games was the precursor to the LucasArts brand, which later absorbed the video game division into one omnibus entertainment company. Before that happened, Lucasfilm Games was responsible for making Star Wars SEGA, Atari, Nintendo, and even Commodore games from the 80s to the early 90s.

Today, the revival of the name has raised some eyebrows in the gaming industry. As fans of the franchise know, software giant EA Games is now synonymous with modern, next-gen <em>Star Wars</em> video games. Although the software company has received its fair share of criticism, they’ve also been behind huge developments in Star Wars gaming in the last decade, from the popular Star Wars Battlefront to the much-awaited Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. At the same time, in pursuing Fallen Order, they let go of developing their even more anticipated open-world Star Wars game. Codenamed Orca, the project would have been the first open-world role-playing game in the beloved sci-fi franchise. But EA chose to nix it in order to focus on smaller-scale projects. This has fueled speculation about Lucasfilm Games potentially taking over this aspect of the Star Wars franchise.

For now, however, there’s been no definite news about what Lucasfilm Games is actually going to focus on. One thing is for sure, Star Wars merchandise has always been popular. Back when it was an active gaming company, Lucasfilm Games was just one part of the huge cross-section of Star Wars-related media, which has shown no signs of slowing down since the merchandising began in the late 70s. In a Lottoland feature on The Most Expensive Movie Memorabilia, the site reveals that Luke Skywalker’s original lightsaber from 1977 sold for $240,000 at an auction, while Han Solo’s blaster was bought for $200,000. In other words, apart from next-gen video games, there are many aspects of Star Wars-related media that Lucasfilm Games could control.

So far, it seems that the company is not looking to replace EA just yet. Although PC Gamer's Fraser Brown points out that Disney has been looking for a technical artist, engineering manager, and lead game designer position on LinkedIn since 2017, its current openings are mostly publishing and marketing jobs. With the listed goal to build the next great set of Star Wars and Lucasfilm heritage products, the openings are for jobs like marketing coordinator and associate brand art director. Given these developments, it doesn’t seem likely that Lucasfilm Games will be producing any new next-gen video games to rival EA soon. But this could mean that they are working on something even more exciting.