The Story Behind Star Wars Galaxies' Notorious Jedi Problem - /noclip

(electronic chirps) (keystrokes clacking) (soft curious music) (keystroke clicks) (curious music brightens) - The story of "Star Wars Galaxies" is one of irresistible fantasy, the fantasy of life in the Star Wars universe, the fantasy of becoming a Jedi, and for legendary game designer Raph Koster,

the fantasy of a dream game project, a Star Wars MMORPG. But with irresistible fantasy comes unavoidable risk.

And so the story of "Star Wars Galaxies" is a story of problems, the story of a wildly ambitious sandbox MMO made against staggering odds and impossible expectations, a game whose capacity to fulfill the dreams of countless Star Wars fans led to one of the most fascinating game design problems

in games history, the Jedi problem. (bright music swells)

(curious music) - So Sony Online Entertainment had cut a deal with LucasArts and Lucasfilm to make an MMO based on Star Wars, on the strength of what they'd accomplished with "EverQuest," and at the time, they had an "EverQuest II" in development and several other MMOs.

It was a moment when SOE was going from a one-title shop to a many-title kind of studio. During that time, actually, myself and what became the core of the "Galaxies" team, we were actually working at Origin. (laughs) But the project we were on was canceled, and we all quit,

and we ended up getting a studio opened for us by Sony Online. They hired us and set up a studio in Austin.

They asked us to come in and take a look at the progress that their Star Wars online was making. We were then slightly shocked because on that very same trip, you know, we met with everybody, and then we told management where we thought the game was, and the meeting ended with them saying, "Why don't you take it over?"

which we absolutely had not expected. We thought that the game was well in progress and that that team owned it and so on.

It was shocking. We spent the entire flight back going, this will be a death march of crunch. This will be excruciatingly hard.

Yeah, but it's Star Wars. They've been going for a year, and we're gonna have to restart it. And, you know, the tech base isn't gonna work.

We're gonna have to change it. Yeah, but it's Star Wars. Yeah, but we're gonna be held to this budget. (laughs) Yeah, but it's Star Wars.