Lucasfilm Brand Boss Talks Overseeing EA During Star Wars Battlefront II Development

DualShockers

By Jordan Boyd

Published Nov 26, 2017

Lucasfilm's Douglas Reilly has given some new information on the process of making games alongside EA and all of its studios as well as how much input they have on how microtransactions are implemented.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Lucasfilm's brand boss Douglas Reilly shed some light on the relationship between EA and Lucasfilm. Most notably Reilly talks a little bit about how much say Lucasfilms has in the creative process as well as their contributions to decisions involving microtransactions and the direction of Star Wars Battlefront II.

When asked about how much input they have in microtransactions as well as the player response to Battlefront II, Reilly said:

"We have input and they take feedback from us across the whole spectrum. We work together very much to understand how those systems work and what they’re trying to achieve, how they touch the brand, and how they affect the consumer experience. I think the challenge, and it’s one that everybody’s facing in this industry—running live services requires tuning and tweaking, and sometimes you don’t get things right the first try, once you put it in the hands of hundreds or thousands or millions of players. You continue to learn how they interact with the things you’ve made, and you run into things you have to adjust along the way. That’s the unfortunate reality of making games with a live service component."

Reilly said that Lucasfilm will often times either check in with EA directly or one of the specific studios working on Star Wars titles. He then went on to say that they'll go visit them in person at least once every quarter to play the latest build of a game and talk about what they'll be doing in the future to improve the title before it's released.

Reilly said that the conversations between the developers and Lucasfilm can range from mundane things like references for Star Wars related characters or vehicles they'd like to add to the game, to more deeper conversations about how the title will tie into the overall Star Wars universe. Their ultimate goal is to make sure that the fans are having a "great Star Wars experience." You can check out the rest of the interview where they talk about Iden Versio as well as The Last Jedi content coming to the game sometime next month.

Star Wars Battlefront II is the latest game from DICE and EA. You can check it out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you're still on the fence about the game, you can check out our review where we address some of the concerns players have had with the title.