Hi Chuck,

This was a fascinating read. I kind of wish we'd had it before because we recently recorded a discussion about the end of Lucasarts for the long time fan site Mixnmojo. It would have provided some good context for the discussion.

But although I'm certain some of our sentiments about the Lucasarts of old may be naive and romanticized, I do think on the whole we were and remain fans for the right reasons. We prized their originality too, and all the new worlds we got to explore. Please consider that we're not all stuck in the past, mourning for a time that could and possibly should never be again. We definitely acknowledged how the influence of those games on videogame storytelling continues today, and I don't think I'm the only one who always wanted LucasArts to be given more chances to develop something original, far more than I wanted to see sequels, exciting as they were.

Let's not kid ourselves, if any one of us on that podcast heard of a sequel to one of the classics, we'd be excited and play it in a heartbeat. But our overwhelming desire for those wasn't for sequels or even remakes. We just want the games to be made available for people to play. I have had so many people tell me that they'd like to play these games they missed first time around, but they can't legally play so many of them, and some are or were until recently difficult to get working besides.

I don't think any of us were particularly angry so much with the closure itself, as the years of poor management that led up to it. Someone guessed that the management mistakes may have began far earlier than we ever knew, and by the sounds of your piece, they were right. In fact, one of the things that came up was how LucasArts has never been a company that's easy to talk to, even when they were making games we loved. We have all sorts of stories of them seeming to love us one second and freeze us out in the next. So it's worth bearing in mind that while it may have been easy to see the cracks from within, to fans and outsiders, we have to try to piece it together from scraps of information.

In all, I think many of us just want to say a final goodbye to this gold guy we knew who was a bit of a mystery, who at times didn't even seem to like us all that much, but led us on some of the defining experiences of our formative years. I think it's okay for us to have that.

-Peter