Today, I got word that a piece of my childhood died. Today, LucasArts Games is no more.

LucasArts is - was - the game development arm of the George Lucas Film company. The same people that made movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones started out nearly 30 years ago to try and make money.

What the world got, however, was something else. The studio was a major innovator in the 90's. They made brilliant games like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Monkey ISland, Loom, The Dig. These, at the time called 'graphic adventure' games showed people how games could startle, surprise, and make people laugh and think without resorting to the cheap thrill violence people typified video games with (and still do sometimes).

In the broader scheme of game development, LucasArts invented two big things. The first was iMUSE, or the Interactive Music Streaming Engine. It let people synchronize music to what was happening in-game, much like a movie would. Except, of course, this "movie" is one you control, so mood, themes, and tone of scenes were preserved. It helped make awesome stories.

The second big thing came earlier: their development of the SCUMM engine. The Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) meant that instead of scripting out event after event on code in-game, events could be worked into the game more quickly. It was a big deal with the adventure games, as they
could include cool events taking place on-screen, and a developer could better "direct" events playing out as opposed to breaking out scripted events on code.

Add to the fact that they were one of the earliest to do high quality in-game voice acting and to try make thoughtful narratives, and you have the makings of a resonant legacy.

I think the odd catchment the company had with the Star Wars world, people recognized the brand instantly, and everything associated with them resonated quickly. Behind a young Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, the company made these daring, different games that were huge hits, even halfway around the world here where I live.

I used to go to my aunt's house every few weekends and I would park myself in front of her PC screen whenever she was done with work. I would go on clicking and clicking a mouse (then a new thing for the early 90's) and play these games. Most days it was Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis. That one was a favorite. I would also go to school and people would have something to say about one of their games. We'd catch up and compare notes: how was your game of X-Wing? Where are you now in Full Throttle? I'm stuck at a puzzle in Loom, can you help?

As they also held the licenses to the Star Wars world, LucasArts also played a role in games later on after the 90's. They greenlit games like "Star Wars: Empire at War" by Petroglyph games (which I have so many fond memories of), and Factor 5's "Star Wars: Rouge Squadron" (which I also thought was incredible). There's also a special something called "Star wars: Knights of the Old Republic" by Bioware, which, to this day, is unsurpassed as Star Wars stories go, that no Star Wars movie in the last decade has surpassed. I tell you, whenever we say George Lucas "lost his touch" with the movies, some games churned out were exceptional and deserve the time and attention of millions.

And that's what hurts when I think about LucasArts. There was always so much room to grow, to move to, to try. Yet, they didn't, and as games got more expensive to develop, they dug a trench around themselves with the Star Wars license, and never tried anything else. They had, for the longest time, the Sam & Max titles, of which nothing happened for a decade. They still are sitting on "Grim Fandango" and "Full Throttle". They had "The Force Unleashed," a Star Wars game set in the world of the movies - and it stank. They even made a bad sequel to it, but no good Indiana Jones game has been made for years.

They were making a new game, "1313", hailed by critics as, well, "A New Hope". Well, that got canned too as the company closes. And it's a punch to the gut for me. Now 150 skilled developers lost their jobs, while the parent company, Disney, decided to close it and it would "[minimize] the company's risk while achieving a broad portfolio of quality Star Wars games". Which is insane, given how many great opportunities still say at the back-burner. It's a business decision, and there may be more behind it, but there seems to be a narrowness of thought behind the decision. They could have at least let the current team finish up their work!

It's just haunting. I'm close to my 30's and I do daydream of what I may pass on to my children. While I've come to accept some parts of my past being lost bit by bit, a company that spans 30 years would've been something special to point to my son and daughter and say "those guys did special things, and I can share them with you.". Now I only have dust to point my finger to, and that whisper in my head that whimpers and weeps.