It’s easy to think that Star Wars: Battlefront II is the sole result of Electronic Arts‘ work, but don’t be fooled — Lucasfilm is involved with everything!
GamesBeat have interviewed Lucasfilm brand boss Douglas Reilly about the process and more, in a very informative must read piece, here’s an extract.
Douglas Reilly told GamesBeat last week. “We have a games team here that I run, that meets with all of our partners, and particularly we spend a lot of time with EA, both on the marketing side and the production teams. We bring in Lucasfilm’s story team to help us shape and build the stories we’re telling, so they fit in the continuity of all the other things we’re doing with the Star Wars universe. So yes, we’re very hands-on.”
That involved strategy has the two companies spending a lot of time together.
“In general, we’ll have weekly meetings between the production teams and the marketing teams, with either EA in Redwood Shores or the individual teams in Stockholm and Montreal and Vancouver, wherever they have studios,” said Reilly. “We have weekly meetings. Then we regularly go and visit in person, probably once a quarter, to sit with them, play builds of the games, walk through progress and where we’re going in the future. We’re constantly talking, meeting, and engaging with them in a very collaborative way.”
During those meetings, Lucasfilm would spend time giving feedback on unfinished versions of the game, or it might try to plan out the future with EA.
“Sometimes it’s, hey, where are we going with post launch content? Or a game that we haven’t even announced yet,” said Reilly. “Sometimes it’s big strategic thinking and sometimes it’s all the way down to tactical — ‘hey, we need reference for this particular vehicle or model’ — that kind of conversation. It runs the gamut all the way from the most truly mundane to the highest levels of, what kind of stories do we tell and how do we want to tell them?”
As for Battlefront II, Reilly sees the collaboration as the proud result of Lucasfilm and EA’s relationship.
“We’ve come together to create something that I think is a very unique, authentic, broad experience that allows you to have a story campaign, play in multiple planets across multiple eras, with a huge set of heroes and other characters,” he said. “I think it’s a testament, actually, to our ability to work together toward that vision, when you see the end product.”
Read the full interview here or at the link below at GamesBeat, part of the VentureBeat news network.
