Latest Star Wars Game a Literal Crap on Brand

by Ho Lee Hiel

The familiar music and large title open “STAR WARS” zooms.  However, unlike the familiar movie opening which has the title continues to be followed by text it pauses.  Then a sinister figure dressed and hooded in a black robed strides across the screen above the title, clearly a Sith Lord.  It stops above the center of the words.  It flips it’s hood back and it is…Darth Mickey?

Perplexed as we are, we watch as Darth Mickey squats, grunts and then a brown pile of excrement falls “splat” on the STAR WARS logo.  Then it slowly moves away again, and what follows is not a texts, but what are best described as caricatures of the franchise’s fans.  Figures dressed as characters, men and women with fandom shirts on, kids with toy light sabers.  All getting the large brown Darth Dump dripping down on top of them.

This is the latest title produced by EA.  A literal dump on the name and fans of Star Wars.

But the story is perhaps more entertaining.  It all started in what an anonymous employee of Obsidian Entertainment, the developer of the “game”, says was a “drunken joke that went way farther than we imagined.”  The employee, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her and her colleagues reputations, told us.  “We were all at a bar after we read the fall out from all the Battlefront stuff, and we talked about the total s**t fest Disney and EA have done with the games.”

Apparently, the concept of a s**t fest became fuel for a drunken story boarding session.  “It all got a little hazy, but the next day I woke up with a huge hangover and a napkin with a storyboard, or something like one, of Mickey as a Sith Lord taking a ginormous crap on the Star Wars logo and dripping down on fans.”

Though it was a funny idea, it slowly morphed into something more.  “I brought it with me to a staff meeting and tossed it on the table and we all had a good laugh,” she chuckles in remembrance, “But then someone made the statement, ‘You know, I bet we could get it by EA.’ Then the room got still.  We all looked around as if thinking, ‘You know, we probably could.”

“I thought the idea would die there, but my manager came back later that week to me and said, ‘I told the joke to Feargus, and when he stopped laughing, he said he’s give whoever pitched it to EA a $1,000 bonus.  He’d throw in a paid vacation to Hawaii if we got them to greenlight it.’  So at that point we decide, why the hell not?”

What came next was, “a journey so crazy, Alice in Wonderland has nothing on it.”  They wrote a pitch and went to meet with a representative from EA.  “We started in, and when they heard the insanely low price tag, the rep said, ‘Okay, great…now how well is it monetized?’  We stumbled for half a second but then my manager started off the top of his head saying, ‘Well, commiserate with the development cost we’re starting at $3.99.  We think we can port it over to mobile and keep the price.  But…that’s not the best part, we’re looking at microtransactions for palette swaps and skins.  $1 to $3 a pop.  And those skins are infinitely scalable.’ At the word microtransactions, the EA rep told us go ahead and build it, EA would publish it.”

“We really couldn’t believe it, and neither could Feargus.  But when he got an official note that “STAR WARS: Revenge of the Dark Mouse” was a go, he told us that after launch, or even if EA got wise, we’d have a trip to Hawaii on him just for getting so far.”  They quickly launched their anticipated 3 months development track, given the simplicity of the product.

Lucas Arts was no harder.  Hearing EA signed off and that the plan would allow the  some cross-branding with Disney products, the Lucas Arts representative stated, “Well, they did good with [Knights of the Old Republic 2]…though tell them they have to get the game done in a month and half.”

The final product has now hit PC, X-BOX One, PlayStation 4, the Apple Store and Google Play.  Nintendo denied development for their product.  Other Obsidian and EA representatives confirmed that the product has actually been a huge success, with over 1.2 million sales and rising.  Also our sources indicate the most popular skins are selling quickly, with a skin changing the fans to Gungans and a swap of Darth Mickey to George Lucas being the two most popular.

“Not only do I have a vacation next week, we’re getting a bonus,” our source said while rolling her eyes in disbelief.  “I’m pretty sure no one at EA or LucasArts even has seen the game, just the $ signs.  What do you want to bet they’ll want a sequel?”