Last month, LucasArts drew attention when it put up a job posting for a gameplay engineer to work on an as-yet-unannounced open-world role-playing game. That's not the only secret project in the works at the publisher, as LucasArts' job pages now include listings for developers to work on an action adventure game, a first-person shooter, and an aerial combat game.

LucasArts has a history in all three genres. In the '90s, the company's X-Wing series of Star Wars flight combat games were among the most popular such titles on the PC. While the publisher also has its Secret Weapons series of World War II-era dogfighting sims (Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Secret Weapons Over Normandy), the requirements listed for the aerial combat game position indicate that experience in the genre, "especially space-based shooters," is a plus.

As for first-person shooters, LucasArts has produced titles in the genre both inside and outside of its prized Star Wars franchise. The Star Wars Dark Forces and Battlefront games are the publisher's best-known efforts in the genre, but it also produced a Western first-person shooter in 1997's Outlaws, as well as a more recent sci-fi effort with 2008's Fracture.

LucasArts' other famous film franchise has also provided the publisher with action adventures like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. As for clues from the job opening, it notes only that "experience with cinematic action adventures is a plus."

At the moment, LucasArts has only a pair of upcoming projects announced. Those games consist of Kinect Star Wars for the Xbox 360 and the PC online game Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is primarily being developed by Electronic Arts' BioWare Austin studio.


Posted: Sep 19, 2011 11:37 am