Star Wars Galaxies Devs discuss the reasons it died

July 23, 2021

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“The most famous patch in videogame history.”

I love a GDC postmortem, with the Fallout and Diablo breakdowns as classic examples of the form. The latest from this year’s all-digital GDC put Star Wars Galaxies on the slab so creative director Raph Koster and executive producer Richard Vogel could dissect what went wrong with the infamous MMO. The opening crawl stated that “This is the story about the worst game to be a classic and the most infamous part of videogame history.”

Star Wars: Galaxies is a game that’s fondly remembered for its crafting, player driven economy, house-customizing and dancing. But at launch, it was a complete disaster. According to Vogel and Koster, the main reason was how fast it was launched. The developers requested an additional six months, but that was reduced to one month of crunch.

One of the features was removed during that month was a tracking system that tracked how players could unlock the ability become a Jedi. You would have to complete a random set of activities. However, you wouldn’t know what they were. The plan was to learn, explore, and test everything until you were told one day that you had a connection with the Force. In the end, you would need to choose five skills randomly from the vast array of available. However, you wouldn’t know that. Koster stated that this was a “very fateful decision” made at the end a 14- to 16-hour work day.

Developers wanted the exact result. Jedi were mysterious and rare, while most people played other characters. A third of each server’s players ran shops. You could have your own fun and ignore the basic quests to run beauty pageants or roleplay.

This is a difficult angle to sell. Placards for warriors with laser swords are much easier to place. Koster explained that marketing tells us, “You know what? To do a new push in marketing we need Jedi in our game.” “We want Jedi by Christmas. They added a holocron to tell players what to do next in order to unlock Force powers. Soon, players were leaving their shops to learn skills and become Jedi. It was not fun, but completeionism is hard to stop.

The New Game Enhancements patch added Jedi as an option and overhauled many of the systems. The community was disillusioned by the launch. They wanted a game that focused on crafting, dancing, economics, home decoration and pets. They unsubscribed in large numbers.

When Star Wars Galaxies closed down in 2011, its final hours saw an outpouring of love for the much-maligned MMO, with players returning to log on one last time. Vogel states, “They made their own stories in Star Wars Universe and that is what made it special.”

Previous GDC postmortems have been posted to YouTube, and hopefully this one will be soon.