The something else came from a brainwave from Tom Stone, the project's leader, who came up with the idea to introduce LEGO's free-form play to Star Wars' engaging world.
"Suddenly everything crystallized," Smith says. "Not only do we have interesting ideas of what we can do with LEGO, but it's linked energetically to nothing less than the world's favorite characters and stories." It allowed them to seduce people in a way LEGO alone wouldn't. There was a prior relationship between the LEGO Company and Lucas, stretching back to the Phantom Menace, when the first LEGO Star Wars playsets appeared. As the game gestated, LucasArts was beginning to market Revenge of the Sith. With a demo version, they approached Lucasfilm. "It was immediately received very kindly by the Lucasfilm group. It was the credibility of being part of the LEGO Company that gave us that trust."
Well, that and the demo. The LEGO Company forged a relationship with children's action game specialist Traveller's Tales, who'd previously worked with Pixar and Sony, to develop the game. While the demo was rudimentary, Lucasfilm fell in love with it. They could walk around. They could turn their lightsabers on and off, with appropriate noises - though they couldn't swing them. But still, the game's charm showed through. "For all that it was limited, it was immediately technically accomplished at the engine level and crucially fun to play," says Smith. "The characters were just fun to walk around. And they had to be, as you couldn't do much else with them. To have nailed that at the start, it was only ever going to get better. ... We stared with pure fun."
Once the game got its go-ahead, things started to change, and the LEGO Company was having trouble working with Traveller's Tale on day-to-day operations. Eventually, members of the LEGO Company splintered off and formed Giant Interactive Entertainment, to create games on the LEGO Company's behalf. "It became clear to us that this business of creating games required specialized attention and focus," Smith says.
This wasn't a traditional publishing company. This was a publishing company that lavished all its attention on creating one game, passing off any issues not directly connected to making that game onto others. (For example, Eidos handled its distribution.) In some ways, it's reminiscent of the "production company" model Wideload used when they created Stubbs the Zombie. (For more on Wideload's production method, see "The Wideload Way" by Allen Varney.)
One element they kept in-house was marketing. In the case of LEGO Star Wars, that's proved relatively tricky, even with the Star Wars name attached to it. "Throughout the course of developing LEGO Star Wars, almost every meeting [we went] into, people had not known what to expect," Smith says. "They were, to some extent, confused to what a LEGO Star Wars game could be. How did it fit in with LEGO? How did it fit in with Star Wars? How did it fit in with the gaming market at the time? Was there a place for it?" That lasted until they actually saw it. People played it and understood. "Our job was to get as many people as possible to play the game. The risk was that it wouldn't be found, people wouldn't encounter it."
Up to release, there was a lot of coverage, but there were understandable jitters leading toward launch day. "We'd staked a lot on it, from a publishing side, on its success. It's a very costly business," Smith says. "The moment a game goes on sale and all that work translates to a commercial reality is always unpredictable." The launch was a mild success, but its sales continued, a factor Smith attributes to word of mouth. Eventually it was "much more successful than any of us had ever hoped," he says. "We knew we loved it, and we'd set out to make a game with broad appeal ... but we didn't really know what that would mean commercially."
