Star Wars 1313 & Epilogue

Star Wars 1313

1. Based on what you know, do you think 1313 would be a success?
2. What key themes did you observe?
3. In previous games we’ve seen egalitarian projects with no definable leader, in 1313 the project lead changed multiple times.
   1. Have you ever been on a project that changed leaders midway through? How was that experience?
4. “To get anything done, the studio’s management would need to go up the ladder to their bosses at Lucasfilm, who for the most part, were old-school filmmakers with little interest in video games.”
   1. How would this hamper creativity?
   2. How could it help?
   3. In what ways was George Lucas a help or a hindrance to LucasArts?
5. “Here’s an incredibly talented group of people with a lot of great ideas and a lot of skill but not a lot of focus.”
   1. Why does this keep coming up in studio after studio, project after project?
   2. What is the answer? How does a team get focus?
   3. How can your team gain laser like focus?
6. “Markus believed the best way to make a video game was to spend as much time as possible in preproduction…”
   1. What is great about this approach?
   2. What are the pitfalls?
7. LucasArts thought they had enough time to get 1313 done, or at the least it would be picked up by someone else at a fire sale. Neither happened and the game never was. What big assumptions or presumptions do you have about your project?

Epilogue

1. “Will there ever be a reliable formula for making games that allows for more predictable schedules?”
2. What about you? What are your big takeaways from studying these 10 case studies?