Five lessons from the history of making Star Wars games

gamedeveloper.com:

Thanks to the power of puns, May 4th is now a "holiday" dedicated to the world of Star Wars. First birthed in the notebooks of George Lucas, it's now a major multimedia franchise that's inspired game developers working inside and outside of the franchise.

Over the last decade, various teams who've worked on the series have been kind enough to share some of the game development lessons they gained when visiting the galaxy far far away. Some studios like Respawn Entertainment and BioWare have gotten to build their own corners of the universe, while others like DICE and EA Motive have done an incredible job capturing the energy of the series high-stakes battles.

To celebrate this year's May the Fourth, we're gathering five of those learnings from the world of game development for your perusal. Hopefully it's a list that grows longer and longer as more studios are given the chance to bring the Star Wars universe to life.

Aspyr Media's port of Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast gave us a great chance to reach out to Raven Software, which still employs many developers who worked on one of the most beloved Star Wars games from the Gamecube era.

If you're ever looking back at that game and wondering "how did they do that?" It's worth paying attention to just how much has changed in the craft of game development. Lead designer Chris Foster told us at the time that everyone on the Jedi Outcast team "wore a lot of hats."

"I built levels, I was in charge of the design team but I also had to light levels, I was scripting, and we were doing all the continuity of everything and we were helping Eric make sure that when the dialogue went it, that it all made sense give what we had to change around," he recalled.

"A lot of times now we’re a