Today, Lucasfilm Games announced that it would enter into a partnership with Ubisoft to create an open Star Wars war game. The title will be developed by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, which marks the first time a company outside of EA has produced a Star Wars game since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, ending nearly eight years of exclusivity. Also in play is a new Indiana Jones game, developed by Bethesda Game Studios, a newcomer to Lucasfilm and Disney properties.
Let’s start with Star Wars. The development of this new title is still very early – Massive continues to recruit even the project – so the details are scarce. Julian Gerighty, director of The division 2 i The team, will serve as the game’s creative director and the title will use Massive’s Snowdrop engine. Beyond that, Lucasfilm Games has not revealed anything about the characters or the settings of the Star Wars universe that the game will include.
This announcement follows yesterday’s news that Lucasfilm is partnering with Bethesda to create a Indiana Jones title, the first AAA game that didn’t belong in Star Wars in years. The move is a seismic shift to Lucasfilm’s approach to gaming, expanding the store for developers who want to create games using Lucasfilm franchises, particularly in the Star Wars universe.
Although EA had previously suggested that the company would have exclusivity in Star Wars games for ten years, it appears that it was no longer properly indicated or that the clock has run out sooner. (Lucasfilm would not confirm for WIRED in any way.) Regardless, EA will continue to make games in the future, but Lucasfilm Games is free to look for other partners.
“EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and in the future,” Sean Shoptaw, senior vice president of Disney’s Global Games and Interactive Experiences, told WIRED. “But it seemed to us that there was room for others.”
In 2013, Disney laid off 150 employees at LucasArts, ending the game’s internal development. The reason at the time was that the measure would minimize “the company’s risk and achieve a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games,” according to a statement the company made. The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
However, in later years, EA’s exclusivity agreement has been criticized as an obstacle to this goal. Aside from a few small mobile or VR games, one can count on the number of EA’s main Star Wars games since 2013. By allowing more developers to contribute their gaming ideas, Lucasfilm hopes to diversify the titles it offers.
“I think if we look at the gaming landscape, it’s such a diverse population of people from all over the world who create games,” Shoptaw explains. “For us to capture the amount of quality in the world and be fast in the market, it would be a great challenge to do it internally.”
As with previous EA games, any new Star Wars game will be part of the same canon and continuity of Star Wars shared in all movies and TV shows produced since the Disney acquisition. James Waugh, Lucasfilm’s vice president of content and franchise strategy, explains that while this means games won’t always connect directly to content from other media, the possibility is on the table.
“I think where people get hooked, sometimes it’s like‘ Oh, then has to connect to everything else. And that’s not necessarily what we always say, “Waugh told WIRED.” This will happen if it’s appropriate for this story. “
This new non-exclusive deal for Star Wars games, as well as the rest of Lucasfilm’s franchise bookstores, leaves the door open for developers to present their own ideas about stories at Lucasfilm Games. “There’s no shortage of people knocking on our door and wanting to play with our toys,” Douglas Reilly, vice president of Lucasfilm Games, told WIRED.
Among that field is Todd Howard. The famous director of Skyrim (among many other games) is also huge Indiana Jones fan. “What has been most inspiring about the Indy game in particular is that it’s a passion project for Todd Howard,” Waugh explained. “He came in with a point of view and a story that he really believes in.”
Of course, these franchises are still, in Reilly’s words, Lucasfilm’s toys. “Ultimately, we have the final approval on everything,” Reilly explained. While developers (including but no longer exclusively EA) may be free to submit story ideas to the company, these developers will continue to play at the Disney game house.
Keeping gamers and developers inside this gaming house seems to be the ultimate goal of the recently renamed Lucasfilm Games. Increasingly, video games compete for leisure and entertainment time with film and television. Disney has a long history of dominating film and television competing for consumer eyeballs, but it doesn’t have the same level of experience with video games. Leveraging the talent of outside studios could mean consumers spend many more hours a day within the company’s extensive franchises than if Disney depended solely on film and television.
A single story-based game can take tens of hours. An open world game, like the one Ubisoft is doing with Lucasfilm Games, can take hundreds of hours depending on how long a player wants to explore. “This is really based on what we’re doing, because they’re massive entertainment experiences that last many hours, much longer than movies,” Shoptaw explained.