Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser extended essay/review
August 8, 2023 10:58 AM Subscribe
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser extended essay/review
I wrote 12,000 word piece on a recent trip to Disney's Galactic Starcruiser “Star Wars hotel”, looking at it from a game design/business/marketing perspective, with plenty of photos. My background is in designing ARGs and augmented reality games, so I was very curious to check it out before it closes next month. tl,dr: it’s extremely impressive and consciously uses a lot of ideas and mechanics from RPGs and MMOs! It's been very much misunderstood, and I'm convinced that soon as it closes, it'll be considered a lost classic.
I wrote 12,000 word piece on a recent trip to Disney's Galactic Starcruiser “Star Wars hotel”, looking at it from a game design/business/marketing perspective, with plenty of photos. My background is in designing ARGs and augmented reality games, so I was very curious to check it out before it closes next month. tl,dr: it’s extremely impressive and consciously uses a lot of ideas and mechanics from RPGs and MMOs! It's been very much misunderstood, and I'm convinced that soon as it closes, it'll be considered a lost classic.
Role: writer
This was a great article. We had waffled on doing it before the cancellation was announced, then all the remaining spots sold out almost immediately and we regret not going. Given how quickly it sold out I wish Disney had extended it month-to-month as long as it was still selling out, but alas.
posted by jedicus at 10:58 AM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 10:58 AM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Really fantastic work, Adrian. I was astonished by how the actors could respond in real time to the choices you'd made. And I loved all the photos of the panels, they were exactly what I'd imagined and they gave me joy.
I was... disappointed, I think(?), to see the arrival of known characters from the IP. There seems to be an inevitable pull to draw everything back to the familiar faces, but it always seems to undermine all the work they've done to establish the vastness of that particular universe. Maybe that's something that the test audiences said they wanted? But I'm wondering if it's backfiring now across the whole IP as these characters become overexposed.
posted by mochapickle at 5:02 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was... disappointed, I think(?), to see the arrival of known characters from the IP. There seems to be an inevitable pull to draw everything back to the familiar faces, but it always seems to undermine all the work they've done to establish the vastness of that particular universe. Maybe that's something that the test audiences said they wanted? But I'm wondering if it's backfiring now across the whole IP as these characters become overexposed.
posted by mochapickle at 5:02 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a theory floating around that the Starcruiser's perceived lack of scarcity may be part of what did it in – in other words, if people thought it might end soon, or at least this iteration of the Starcruiser, then there would've been more demand. It's impossible to know for sure, but the fact that it's totally booked up until closure suggests some truth in that!
I absolutely agree on the disappointment of how central the existing characters were. Bizarrely, they were barely shown or promised in the marketing, so it's not as if anyone visited with the belief they'd definitely be there. Clearly it's a safe bet to include them but the last several years of Star Wars shows that safe bets don't make good entertainment.
posted by adrianhon at 1:29 AM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I absolutely agree on the disappointment of how central the existing characters were. Bizarrely, they were barely shown or promised in the marketing, so it's not as if anyone visited with the belief they'd definitely be there. Clearly it's a safe bet to include them but the last several years of Star Wars shows that safe bets don't make good entertainment.
posted by adrianhon at 1:29 AM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
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