Star Wars games could get even more interesting as Lucasfilm embraces smaller studios
The success of Star Wars Zero Company and Galactic Racer could encourage Lucasfilm Games to pursue more unconventional projects from smaller development teams.
Star Wars games could be about to get a lot more interesting.
This year has already delivered two games that stepped outside the traditional Star Wars mould: Bit Reactor's XCOM-style strategy game Star Wars Zero Company and Fuse Games' arcade racer Star Wars Galactic Racer.
Both were developed by independent studios, and their success could encourage Lucasfilm Games to pursue more unusual projects in the future.
That shift is very much intentional, according to Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly.
He told The Game Business: "Obviously, huge triple-A games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy.
"But one of the great things about Star Wars is it has all kinds of other opportunities to tell stories in different genres."
Rather than restricting the licence to the industry's biggest publishers and studios, Lucasfilm wants to find developers best suited to each idea, regardless of the project's size.
Reilly said: "The goal has been to find the best partner who makes that experience come alive inside the galaxy far, far away.
"And it doesn’t have to always be triple-A, sometimes it can be double-A, and it’s really about the experience that we’re delivering and the fantasy we’re fulfilling."
That is a notable change from Disney's post-LucasArts approach.
After acquiring Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney shut down LucasArts the following year and subsequently granted Electronic Arts a 10-year exclusive deal to make Star Wars games.
That partnership produced several major releases, but Disney eventually moved towards a more open licensing strategy.
Lucasfilm Games was revived in 2021 as the umbrella identity for the company's gaming projects, and Reilly says it is now more willing to consider pitches from unexpected sources.
He said: "Good ideas can come from a lot of different places. You don’t have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game."
There are still plenty of conventional Star Wars projects in development, including Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, a third Star Wars Jedi game, Star Wars: Eclipse and the long-awaited Knights of the Old Republic remake.
