Death, Star Wars , And The LEGO Pooper Trooper

granted the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award. And it was granted to them byLucasfilm founder George Lucas. So it kind of goes full circle here.Brian CrecenteYes, so the other half of that group, the Lucas Computer Division became Lucasfilm Games'Group. And they worked with Atari, which helped fund the group. Because of that funding,Atari actually got the license for Star Wars video games. So the Lucasfilm Games Groupinstead of working on Star Wars properties, mostly focused on creating original titles, and Ithink frankly the entire world is very happy that happened because it brought us anamazing list of games, including the fantastic Maniac Mansion; Habitat; Labyrinth; TheSecret of Monkey Island, and you know, I could just keep naming games.Ethan VincentYeah, but didn't they also make some early Indiana Jones' games?Brian CrecenteYeah, they did actually. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hit in 1989. And Indiana Jonesand the Fate of Atlantis was in 1992.Ethan VincentYeah, you know, this is really interesting, Brian, because you think about the LucasfilmGames group and they're doing all these great games, but like you said they're not doingStar Wars. When when did that start up again? Were they able to kind of get back to that?Brian CrecenteYes, so the first in-house Star Wars game was the excellent space combat simulator, XWing, which went on to spawn a beloved series. Then in the mid 90s, they started makingfirst-person shooters with Star Wars: Dark Forces, and then Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Thefranchise got a very successful series of role-playing games with Knights of the OldRepublic in the 2000s. And they even had a massively multiplayer online game in 2003 withStar Wars Galaxies.Ethan VincentAgain, really fascinating history, just video game history, I love it. How does this all cometogether, Brian?Brian CrecenteWell, it's interesting. It's all really about the context. So LucasArts is in the midst of this sortof renaissance of Star Wars video games. They're churning out massive hit after massive hitfor fans of hardcore gaming. In 2004 alone, the studio released five games, four of thembased on Star Wars properties, and in 2005 they released six more games from

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, to Star Wars Battlefront II. 2005 also happens tobe the year that LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game hit.Ethan VincentAha, there's the connection, and you know, I look back at the episode we did on this andthese early beginnings with Giant Interactive. Super fascinating and just an incredible storyof also how this game came to be.Brian CrecenteRight. And this history of these tremendous successes by LucasArts at the time with thesesort of very gritty action-oriented games, goes a long way in explaining the early internalreaction to the LEGO Group coming up to LucasArts and saying they want to make a videogame based on a Star Wars property.Ethan VincentYeah, I can only imagine, like here you are making first-person shooters and massivelymultiplayer online games, and tactical games, right? And all of these titles aimed at adultfans of Star Wars, people who really live and breathe for the franchise, and suddenly alongcomes the LEGO Group with this game.Brian CrecenteYeah, exactly, and now on top of that, you have to look at the LEGO Group's history at thetime. Even though the company had been making video games for a decade by the timeLEGO Star Wars: The Video Game came out, with a couple of exceptions they werebasically very different than that massive hit, the LEGO Star Wars game.Ethan VincentYeah, yeah. You know, they had obviously done LEGO Loco, LEGO Friends, LEGO Racers,LEGO Bionicle. A lot of these games were viewed, I think on some level, as an extension ofthe marketing arm of the LEGO Group, maybe not by its gaming merits, you know?Brian CrecenteRight, and on top of that, they definitely skewed toward a much younger audience. So, youtake LucasArts and its tremendous success with teen-friendly, adult-friendly hardcoregames, and here comes the LEGO Group with a history of children and family games, and atleast internally, to be frank, there was a lot of initial doubt about what would come of it.Ethan VincentTo be frank, right? So you aren't Frank normally, Brian?

Brian CrecenteAh, yeah, so OK –Ethan Vincent(Laughs)Brian Crecente– to be blunt (laughs). So to be blunt, internally at LucasArts, the very first TT Game, LEGOStar Wars: The Video Game, was sort of brushed off initially. It was seen as a marketingstunt, something that certainly wouldn't have any major impact on anything Lucas wasdoing on its side.Ethan VincentYeah, but boy, did that change. I mean, that's remarkable that change.Brian CrecenteYes, and very quickly.Chapter 2: Matt Fillbrandt and Matt Shell - Part I – 08:33Brian CrecenteAnd that brings us to today's episode. Matt Shell, Director of Brand Marketing at LucasfilmGames and Matt Fillbrandt, Executive Producer in charge of product development atLucasfilm Games wanted to tackle this interview together because they've workedbasically side-by-side forever on these titles.Ethan VincentYeah, and boy did they have great chemistry. That was so fun, Brian, to hear how thisworked out and and how they managed to turn so many emotive, amazing moments in thefilms into these poignant, but also family-friendly moments made of LEGO bricks.Brian CrecenteYes. All that and more in this interview. So let's have a listen.(Music)Matt ShellMy name is Matt Shell. I'm the Director of Brand Marketing at Lucasfilm Games. Yeah, so Iwent to college for business and marketing and graduated and started working at astrategic design and marketing firm. And Sega was one of our clients. I went to my first

meeting there. And I said, "My God, I’ve got to work at this place. This is the coolest jobI've ever seen." And I got a job there and worked there for a little bit, and when mydepartment was was laid off I said, "There's only two jobs that I think I can go to next thatwould make me happy." One of those was hosting the Tonight Show, which didn't seemlike a real feasible option. And the other was working for Star Wars. And that was, God,probably 16, 17 years ago, and I've been here in a number of different roles throughout thelast 15 years or so.Matt FillbrandtI'm Matt Fillbrandt, I'm the Executive Producer in charge of product development atLucasfilm Games. I actually worked at a law firm, but with the intention of going to lawschool, but after having worked with attorneys in a high pressure law firm environment, Idecided that probably wasn't a good path for me to take, and I wanted to try to get intosomething more creative. I was a huge video game fan. And so I had frequently been goingto the Lucasfilm website, and lo and behold, a position opened up at LucasArts in the legaldepartment. Had a lot of similarities with things that I'd been doing at that time incorporate law, and I took a chance, applied for the position and ended up getting it withthe mindset of knowing that I wanted to do something else. I didn't know what at thattime, but I just want to get my foot in the door at Lucas, and I made a transition over toproduction. I started there back in 1999, so I've been with the company for now 22 years, Iguess. And it's been a great ride so far.Brian CrecenteWhen did you, both of you, I'm curious, when did you first hear about TT Games workingon a Lucasfilm property? And what were your thoughts when you first heard that there wasgoing to be this sort of team up and the LEGO Group was involved?Matt ShellYeah, I think that's probably more along my timeline at LucasArts.Ethan VincentThis is Matt Shell speaking,Matt ShellIf you remember, we were working on all sorts of different games, you know, flight gameslike Secret Weapons over Normandy, and Armed and Dangerous and the Old Republicgames. My boss had come to me and told me that I was going to be working on this newLEGO Star Wars game, and to be honest, I think we all were kind of like, “Huh?” Like, thatdidn't make a whole lot of sense for us given the other types of games we were workingon, given what our audience looked like, given the direction of the company. And so thatproject came over to me primarily because it was really just a marketing relationship at thetime. We were not publishing that game. So you know, we knew about TT, we had very

few conversations, and mostly it was just about working on sort of that creative, thecreative elements for the game with Eidos, and working as more the license holders on thetitle moreso than we were from a production or marketing standpoint.Brian CrecenteYeah, you know, it's interesting, you raise an interesting point. If you look at sort of asnapshot of the year before and the year of that game's release, no one would haveexpected a LEGO game to come from one of the properties because you had theBattlefront games, you had Knights of the Old Republic, you had Mercenaries, Empire atWar, so those are all like T and up rated games that are certainly, like you said, they're sortof meant for a particular, I think a very particular sort of audience. And then along comesthis game that is, at least at first blush, seems like it's tied directly to a much youngeraudience.Matt ShellYeah. Well, first off, you gotta love those titles that you mentioned. Those were reallyexciting and fun times for us working on things like Mercenaries, it was really a hoot. If youremember, the LEGO Star Wars game was sort of the first of these movie-type games thathad that LEGO spin on them. But before that, when we were thinking about LEGO games,you were talking about little kid games and little builders and games that took advantageof the LEGO generic minifigs. And there was it was nothing like the LEGO games that weknow today.Brian CrecenteYeah, no, you're right. I mean, yeah, there's obviously well before them, but LEGO Island,and then there were like a bunch of other games sort of around that time – LEGO Loco,LEGO Racers – but they were all definitely sort of more tied to the theme ets and more tiedto a much younger audience. So on the one hand, you've got LucasArts doing titles thatare sort of much more teen and adult. And on the other, you have LEGO Group doing titlesthat are much younger and theme-set themed. And then the output is something thatdoesn't match either of those, which is, I think, really fascinating.Matt ShellYeah, I think anybody that says we heard about making LEGO Star Wars: The Video Gameand thought, “Oh this is going to be a huge hit, and this makes perfect sense,” you know,I'd be the first to tell you they were lying because that was not exactly the first thoughtthat any of us had, you know, it took a lot of convincing. There were a lot of conversationsthat happened in order to convince us that this is really going to be the match made inheaven as it's turned out to be.

Ethan VincentMatt, this is Ethan here. I think that it's interesting what you said about not too manypeople having that foresight about the potential success. But I also remember in puttinganother episode of Bits N' Bricks together on TT Games, that Brian and I heard the story ofone of the producers at Lucasfilm Games getting these builds and looking at them, youknow, doing check-ins on them, and with every successive build that came in more andmore people were showing up to play it and crowding around behind this person, and bythe end it was like a sudden realization, at least, you know, among developers, that there'sthis really fun game there. And I guess my question is, is this an urban myth or is that true?Matt ShellYeah, I think that's true. I mean, we certainly grew with the game as we were getting abetter understanding of it, and seeing how all of this sort of magic came to be, you know,that fun, and tongue in cheek nature of the game, the whimsy of the game. You really don'tunderstand it until you see it. It's not the kind of thing that can be described really easily,and translates to something that makes people go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea,that makes perfect sense." And so once people started getting their hands on it, seeing it,getting videos of the gameplay and the cutscenes, I think it really started to translate tosomething that made sense for all of us.Brian CrecenteNow, Matt Fillbrandt, what was your first sort of realization that there was a LEGO game inthe works or a TT Game with one of the properties?Matt FillbrandtYou know, people I think were familiar with the fact that the LEGO Group had beenworking with Lucasfilm licensing to put out the physical brick set since about the late ‘90s.And so that proved, I think, to be quite successful. And so you could sort of imagine, itwasn't like this was the first time that that the LEGO Group and Lucasfilm and Star Warshad done something together. So you start to think about the sets that you might havebeen familiar with, and how those we're going to come to life and animation, and how arethey going to do that with this hard plastic bits, and how the character is going to work.And so I think that was like a very interesting thing, because most of the people that I knowthat are in gaming, or have had kids remember their time with LEGO bricks as kids, that'skind of a magical time in your sort of coming of age. And it's sort of awakened thisplayfulness, I think, in all of us that there could be something pretty fun there to be able tointeract with those elements and relive elements of the various trilogies through thatmedium in a totally unique, and in a way that's completely honorable to the series ofgames that you really don't get anywhere else, I think.

Brian CrecenteWhen you look at that first game, one of the things that really stands out, in my mind, is thefact that it sort of minted a very specific type of humor that TT Games was able to usethroughout all the properties, the LEGO games that they've come out with since, whichseems to appeal both to children and adults. And I'm just curious, you know, they're sort ofdoing this on the fly with his first game. Do you think that it did it sort of translate wellwhen it came to those Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties? Or do you feel like that wasa struggle initially?Matt FillbrandtFrom my perspective, I think it worked. I mean, I think it was so kind of fresh and new fromthat perspective that, you know, kind of hats off to Howard Roffman for taking a chancewith something like this that really hadn't been done before with an IP, and had the visionto see potentially building off of the success of the brick, physical brick side of thebusiness, that there could be something special here. And, you know, I think because ofthat sense of humor, hats off to Jon Burton and the folks at TT at the time that were able tokind of bring their vision in that whimsical element to this property that married whateffectively is a, you know, a really a kid's toy, and sort of the ability to break things apartand build things and all those different elements in a way that was so compelling.Matt ShellYeah, I think just just to add to that: Matt sort of hints at it, but I think that humor that youtalk about is really what allows this game to cross so many barriers and boundaries of itsaudience. It is a kid's game. You know, and it does primarily speak to kids in the type ofgameplay, but the humor is what allows adults and different demographics to find thisenjoyable to play on their own, like this isn't – you'd think it would just be a game that kidswould play or maybe parents would play to introduce their kids to Star Wars, but plenty ofadults find it really enjoyable, I think primarily because of that humor aspect, you know, thelittle – putting things on their head a little bit and telling just a slightly different story with ahumorous bend to it really allows it to reach a much different audience.(Music)Chapter 3: Excerpt from Bits N’ Bricks Episode 9 with TomStone – 20:26Ethan VincentSo, Brian, what I'm hearing both Matt saying here in this interview, too, is just how skepticaland surprised they were about LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game. But I'm reminded of thatthey weren't the only ones. There were people who bankrolled the game, even potentialpublishers, who seemed disinterested in the idea behind the game.

Brian CrecenteYeah, that's true. You know, in fact, we did an interview with Tom Stone, who was thefounder of Giant Interactive, which was the studio that was later bought out by Traveller'sTales to become TT Games. He talked a lot about what it was like to sort of shop this gamearound before it had a publisher.Ethan VincentAnd we chatted with a bunch of people about those early years at TT and about LEGO StarWars: The Video Game back in Episode 9 in Bits N' Bricks, Season 1. Let's take a listen.(Sound of lightsabers)Brian CrecenteYou know, it's easy to forget, when you talk about game development, how many peoplehow many ideas, how many long nights are involved in creating a game. Burton tells us thatmuch of those core ideas tied to sort of the foundational work of this game and in turn, sortof all the games that came after it, came from people like John Hodgkinson and JamesCunliffe and Jeremy Pardon. He said he liked the idea of having a lot of different charactersin the game, each with their own abilities, because of something that he saw and played onan old ZX Spectrum, this old game called Thunderbirds, and so that's where some of thatinspiration came from. So anyway, once the deal was made and Traveller's Tales weredeep into development of the game, Giant Interactive still had one really big issue they hadto solve, and that was they needed to find someone who could publish and disseminatetheir game to retailers around the world.Tom StoneWe took a trip to Los Angeles and we met with THQ, we met with Activision, and we metwith Electronic Arts. We had already previously met with Ubisoft, and we'd met with Eidos.I think they were the five publishers that we met with. I then received a phone call fromActivision at the time saying, "Really enjoyed the demo, but we don't think this game isgoing to succeed, so we don't want to be your distribution partner." I got a similar phonecall from THQ saying, "Yeah, you know, we think it's like an interesting idea, but we don'tthink it's that big an idea, so actually, we don't want to be your distribution partner." Andthen, because I'd worked for Electronic Arts, I thought, "Well, they'll be on board." We'dalready worked with Electronic Arts on some LEGO brick stuff, I thought they might be onboard, and they actually turned me down as well. So at this point, I was thinking, "Ooh, thiscould be interesting. So we've got this game that we were working on developing it, andwe are not going to be able to find a worldwide distribution partner." Anyway, Ubisoft andEidos actually did say, they both said, we really believe in this, and we'd love to work withyou on it. And we decided to go with Eidos. Part of the reason we went with Eidosbecause they didn't have any other games. And we thought, they will give us all theirattention. And we think that's really good for this. I didn't want to be fifth on the list at,

let's say, at an Activision or another company. I want to be at the top of their list. This is themost important game that we're going to release in 2005, and that was true for Eidos. Thatwas their most important worldwide game in 2005. We got attention in Japan (the gamewas released out over there), it got an incredibly powerful release in Europe, and they did afantastic job in North America. So tha

Death, Star Wars , and the LEGO Pooper Trooper Before LEGO Star Wars : The Video Game crashed onto the scene, raking in millions and redefining what it meant to be a LEGO game, a Star Wars game, and a family-friendly game, it was a mostly overlooked project by Lucasfilm. While TT Games and the LEGO Group had faith that the title would do well, those at