During a presentation at the2020 DICE Summiton Wednesday, Sean Shoptaw, Senior Vice President of Games and Interactive Experiences for The Walt Disney Company, shared his perspective on trends in the video game industry that are changing the gaming landscape. One of those trends he’d like to see continue is the creation of more games like 2019’sStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Shoptaw, who has been with Disney since 2011, encouraged developers and creatives to “come and play” with Disney’s extensive catalog of characters and franchises to help usher in the next generation of original interactive storytelling. He citedInsomniac Games’Marvel’s Spider-Manand Respawn Entertainment’sStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderas prime examples of how Disney characters and settings could be successfully reimagined.
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The Disney exec also spoke about the importance of challenging assumptions and pushing boundaries in order to continue to evolve as an industry. This is particularly telling, consideringStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderis asingle-player, narrative-driven gamepublished by Electronic Arts, a company whose Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen notoriously claimed in 2017 that players don’t like linear single-player experiences as much as they did five or 10 years ago.
This assumption proved to be untrue, given the unprecedented success of many recent single-player games such asGod of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man,and of courseStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order,which became the sixth bestselling title of 2019 in the US, even though it wasn’t released until November of that year.
The success ofStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderis especially notable, considering that the project didn’t even start out as aStar Warsgame. Respawn Entertainment was working on a third-person action game when the company was acquired by Electronic Arts, who had just secured the rights to theStar Warslicense from Disney. The game Respawn was developing quickly transformed into aStar Warstitle whose story has now become part of the official canon.
Creating more Disney games likeStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which not only experienced great success in the gaming world but also had an impact on other industries, is a challenge that hopefully more developers are willing to take on. Disney has a number of ongoing successful game franchises, includingStar Wars BattlefrontandKingdom Hearts.But having acquired a large portion of 21st Century Fox in early 2019, Disney now theoretically has access to that company’s franchises as well, opening up the possibility of games based onX-Men, Avatar, Indiana Jones,and theAlienseries.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderwas released in November 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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