By Will Jayson Hill



Peter Hirschmann has a great job title at LucasArts: Vice President Product Development, Astromech Research. Don't you wish you had a cool job title like that? And while Mr.Hirschmann doesn't really do astromech research to develop the next R2-D2, he does oversee video game product development for LucasArts. At E3 2005, on the very day Revenge of the Sith hit theaters, Mr Hirschmann sat down with GameShark.com to discuss the future of LucasArts.

SWG Compilation Pack

GameShark: Mr. Hirschmann, the last Star Wars movie has been released. Where does LucasArts go from here? Will you continue to mine the Star Wars universe or will new intellectual properties be forthcoming? Or perhaps some past favorites like Grim Fandango or Full Throttle?



Peter Hirschmann: A little of all of the above. Don't forget that there were Star Wars games before the prequels came out. Star Wars is a beautiful, huge, rich universe. What gives it that classic feel is that going all the way back to the original film, George (Lucas) created back stories for every character and every planet. In his original treatment of Star Wars in the early 70's he mentions Mace Windo, for goodness sake, and the character doesn't show up until 25 years later. It is a very carefully constructed universe. We have full-time Star Wars historians and anthropologists who are working on it all the time. George says there? a planet, character, gadget or ship no matter what you want to do with it, so Star Wars does not limit you, it actually allows you to explore elements of science fiction and make up whatever you need. And Star Wars will continue to live on. So there will be new Star Wars content, but at the same time George has gone on record that he wants LucasArts to expand the universe. Such as was done with Republic Commando and Clone Wars, and expand the story in new directions.

GS: Has there been any thought about making a game with the visual appeal of the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon that has proven to be so popular?



Hirschmann: (laughing and evasive) That's a great idea.



GS: Is that a "no comment?"



Hirschmann: (still laughing) Yeah, that's a "no comment."



GS: What about new IPs?



Hirschmann: Absolutely! It is our mandate from George. We are (a) private (company) and he is our shareholder. He has told us that the development of new IPs is something that we absolutely have to do. And if you look back at our 20+ year history, LucasArts didn't make its own Stars Wars games for the first 10 years.



But we have a wonderful legacy of adventures and Rescue on Fractalus ..



GS: ...and Ballblazer.



Hirschmann: (The movement in) Ballblazer always made me sick. All these games are wonderful, but what we want to do is not literally go back to the past, those adventures were great at the time, and they were the best medium to tell those stories then. We really want to celebrate that legacy, but at the same time we don't want to literally go back. There was a realization that we could not go home, and that's what LucasArts wanted. It was not about doing the same thing over and over, it was about pushing ahead. Now take Rebel Assault, that sold more CD ROM drives than any other piece of software. That was more a simple FMV game, but boy that really, really looked like Star Wars. Dark Forces was a great game, Jedi Knight was a great game. We sold a lot of those. We?e continually innovating and pushing forward. We can celebrate that heritage.

Empires at War

GS: What about IPs like Grim Fandango or Full Throttle?



Hirschmann: I think Tim Schafer is a smart, dynamic individual and Grim Fandango is a classic with a comic style, and if someone came up with an idea we might do it, but my feeling are that some things are best left as they are.



GS: I can respect that. My next question has more to do with the move from the Skywalker Ranch to the new Lucas Films facility on the old Presidio site. Will the proximity of LucasArts to Industrial Light and Magic change the way your games are made?



Hirschmann: Yes and it already has. It was surprising how little connection and cooperation there was between the parts of Lucas Films. With the different geographical locations (of the different divisions), we were all in the same vicinity, but when you had to get into a car to go to a meeting, many just didn't happen. So there was not a lot of cross pollination going on. We were really separate fiefdoms. About two years or a year-and-a-half years ago, we reorganized to bring all these separate companies under the corporate umbrella. And what that did was fostered (more cooperation.) We're been working with ILM. Not so much literally sharing code, but more like "How do you do the water in Perfect Storm?", "How did you do the nuclear explosions in Terminator 3?", "How did you do the fire in Episode III?" All the fire you see in the movie, all the fire and explosions in the space battles? All CG. It't crazy. In our new location, now we can use ILM's stuff right off the bat. That's great! And that's without having to drive to their place or them driving to ours. When we have a meeting, we just walk down the hall.

GS: I understand you've got a heck of a network going on there with the ability to move terabytes of information very quickly.



Hirschmann: As a game company, we're plugged in. When you think about all the things ILM does, right now they're working on War of the Worlds and Harry Potter, they're got so much going on. We can hop on there and send code around almost as fast as we can push the button, and that is so critical when you have to move something new. We have the equivalent of two football fields worth of servers. If you look at the model (of the new facility [which was being displayed in the LucasArts area]), it's the entire sub-basement floor of Building 1.



GS: I know we're about out of time, so one very quick one. What is the future of Star Wars Galaxies? Where is it going next?

Hirschmann: It's been great! With Rage of the Wookies and there is so much neat stuff coming out with Episode III There is so much cool stuff coming out of the movie, there is going to be a great march forward. The ability to go to the movie multiple times and then go to the game (and find and explore those places.)



GS: Thank you.



Hirschmann: May the Force be with you.

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