A Secret to Success
The answer is simple: LucasArts' success is a result of the people; namely, the 300-plus designers and developers who toil away at the company's northern California campus. These artisans of interactivity have woven the Lucas magic into just about every imaginable game genre, spinning whimsical daydreams into engrossing games. They've created some of the most memorable moments over the past decade - those times when you sit back in your chair after playing a game and say, "This is what gaming is all about."
Left to right: LucasArts designers Larry Holland, Tim Schafer, and Hal Barwood.
Those moments are the products of the intense human and creative forces behind each LucasArts games, forces most fully embodied in each game's lead designer. These designers are the visionaries who guide games down the path from an idea scratched on a paper napkin to a completed, multimillion-dollar interactive epic. It's not easy, but as they say, someone has to do it.
3D-accelerated Star Wars action in Holland's X-Wing: Alliance.
Those "someones" are project leaders Hal Barwood, Larry Holland, and Tim Schafer, who have collectively spent nearly 30 years bringing their visions to life by way of LucasArts. Their imaginations are the rich palette from which they draw. Their ideas are the paintbrushes that stroke the digital canvas. More often than not the result is an interactive masterpiece.
In this GameSpot exclusive, we take you behind the scenes to meet these three legendary designers, the men who have been the driving forces at LucasArts for nearly a decade. You'll learn what makes LucasArts different from other publishers, and why it continually produces some of the industry's most renowned software games. And you'll get an inside look at the recently released adventure Grim Fandango and sneak previews of forthcoming games Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and X-Wing: Alliance, including exclusive screenshots.
Inside King Sol's Mine in Barwood's upcoming Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.
And that's not all. You'll also hear industry legends such as Peter Molyneux, Louis Castle, and Ken Williams discuss LucasArts and its impact on the industry. Discover why the influx of Myst-clones destroyed the adventure game market. And hear about a Star Wars adventure game that never was.
