A new report by DFC Intelligence has revealed that, as of mid-2020, there are nearly 3.1 billion global video game consumers.
With nearly 8 billion people around the world, this means that about 40% of of our population plays video games of some form. The fastest growing segment of these consumers are those who only play games on their smartphones. This accounts for almost half of all video game consumers.
Of those nearly 3.1 billion players, only about 8% are dedicated console consumers, but this group has the highest per-user spending.
1.5 billion, or 48% of global video game consumers, are PC game consumers. It’s important to note, however, that “this includes some overlap with gamers that also use console systems and mobile devices.”
DFC’s report also breaks down where these video game consumers live. Asia is the leading region and has 1.42 billion paying game consumers.
Europe is second with 668 million paying game consumers, then Latin America with 383 million, and then North America with 261 million.
Of those users, the following graph shows the breakdown of mobile only users. Asia consists of 53%, followed by Europe’s 17%, Latin America’s 11%, and MENA’s 7%, and North America’s 4%.
As for what these 3.1 billion people are playing, we know that Ghost of Tsushima was the best-selling game of July 2020, followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Paper Mario: The Origami King. These lists from NPD don’t include mobile games, however, or free-to-play games like the mega-hit Fortnite.
I was supposed to compete in the 2020 Pokemon World Championships today.
Originally scheduled to kick off on August 14 and run through the weekend, the event would have brought together hundreds of pro Pokemon players to see who was the very best like no one ever was. It was meant to be held in London as a thematic tie-in to the new Galar region from Pokemon Sword and Shield inspired by Great Britain.
But as we all know, the coronavirus pandemic has caused the cancellation of not only gaming events around the globe but sports, movies, and pretty much everything else. It goes without saying that during these troubling times there are much, much worse things to worry about than having your Pokemon tournament canceled.
Still, as I sit isolated in my tiny Los Angeles studio apartment instead of a convention center on the other side of the world filled with fellow Pokemaniacs, I can’t help but reflect on the strange turn my Pokemon journey has taken.
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A few years ago, I decided to pick up a Pokemon starter deck at Target and play some games with a friend. I hadn’t touched a Pokemon card since I was a kid, but as I shuffled up to battle, a wave of nostalgia hit me.
My mind was flooded with old memories: filling my red plastic binder with gleaming Base Set holos; successfully pulling off a secret card trade during recess in defiance of the school-wide ban on Pokemon cards; throwing down all of my allowance at Toys“R”Us for booster packs as I continued my fiendish, desperate search for a Charizard. And just like that, I was hooked all over again.
A 2019 study showed that people who played Pokemon in their youth developed a Pokemon area of the brain, and like a switch being flipped, mine was lit up like a Christmas tree. Next thing I knew, I was researching the top Pokemon decks, building a collection of all the latest cards, and attending tournaments. I wasn’t addicted. Why would you think I was addicted? You can’t be addicted to a media franchise populated by colorful pocket monsters. Anyway, then and there I decided I’d never rest until I’d become the world’s best Pokemon Trainer no matter the cost.
Playing in local Pokemon tournaments against a dozen players was one thing, but competing in the larger regional tournaments was something else altogether. These bigger events with anywhere from 400 to over 1000 players were key to qualifying for the Pokemon World Championships, the most prestigious and competitive event of the year. A high finish at a regional earns you a bunch of Championship Points—referred to as CP in player lingo—and earning a grand total of 500 CP during the 2019-20 competitive season was how to obtain an invitation to Worlds. There, you have a chance to take first place and win $25,000, eternal glory, and a trophy of a Pikachu holding a smaller trophy, so basically two trophies.
Photo by Joshua Yehl.
When I first started playing the game, I told myself I was only doing it purely to have fun because the process of trying to qualify for Worlds was too troublesome. And it wasn’t lost on me that I was an adult playing a “kids game.” Although, kids competed in their own Junior and Senior divisions, so that left us Masters division players to duke it out on a level playing field. The game proved easy to learn yet hard to master, and the more I played the more I became enamored with its unexpected layers of depth and strategy. It reminded me of what it was like competing on my college chess team, and if being an absolute nerd didn’t stop me then, it sure as heck wasn’t going to stop me now that I, Adult Joshua, had disposable income to buy all the best cards that were never available to me as a kid.
The catch was that in order to make it to Worlds, it required time and dedication to travel to all of the major tournaments in order to obtain that precious CP. The CP grind was often spoken about by veteran players as exhausting and unforgiving because missing a single regional could mean missing out on your Worlds invite, so going for it meant you had to be all-in.
I analyzed the metagame like a mad scientist trying to discover time travel. I drove to so many tournaments that I was forced to replace my tires. And I shuffled so many cards that I developed tendonitis in my right hand. “Could you play less?” the physical therapist asked me. As if! I wasn’t going to let the limitations of my 32 year-old flesh bag stop me. I stuck it out, and after the better part of a year, at the Collinsville regional tournament in February 2020, I not only achieved a career best finish—10th place out of 640 players, thankyouverymuch—but I earned the last remaining CP I needed to land a Worlds invite.
So proud of himself. Shame what’s about to happen. (Photo by Joshua Yehl)
At that point, health experts had raised concerns about COVID-19 but things had yet to take a turn for the worse, so I was nothing but happy and excited knowing I had finally reached my goal… completely oblivious that by the end of March, the 2020 Pokemon World Championship would be canceled.
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Los Angeles has been in various states of lockdown for four months now. Next to my desk is a shelf fully dedicated to storing all of my Pokemon TCG stuff. It’s filled with boxes of organized (okay, loosely organized) cards, a binder of holos, stacks of sleeves and deck boxes, and numerous playmats accumulated from attending tournaments. With all in-person Pokemon events canceled for the foreseeable future, this once heavily-utilized Pokemon deck lab has been doing nothing but collecting dust.
There’s been a lot to get used to since the pandemic forced everything to shut down. For me, a big part of that was figuring out how to build a new life amid the strict rules of quarantine.
Playing Pokemon cards wasn’t only a hobby to enjoy on nights and weekends, it was my way into a community, one that I was now cut off from. I missed competing, I missed traveling, and I even missed the CP grind. But most of all, I missed the friends I had made. Not seeing my Pokemon pals really sucked.
Last year when my birthday came around, I was feeling pretty crummy about myself and decided not to celebrate with a party. But when I showed up at my local game shop for the weekly Pokemon tournament, my playgroup surprised me with a birthday pie (because they know I don’t like cake) and singing me the Happy Birthday song in the middle of the store. I had never felt more embarrassed or more loved in my life.
I hate to say something as cliche as I don’t need to go to the Pokemon World Championships because the real treasure was the friends I made along the way, but there’s a lot of truth to that statement. The Pokemon community is full of some of the kindest, most passionate people I’ve ever met. They are what gives me faith that despite not being able to come together for in-person events, the game and the people who play it will continue to thrive.
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Already, The Pokemon Company has attempted to reignite the competitive scene online. Qualifiers for the newly minted Players Cup took place in June and we’re still in the process of whittling down to a winner as new rounds are played over the passing weeks. It’s an international contest, so there’s a semblance of this being a replacement for Worlds, but Worlds is far more than just a competition.
It’s a massive gathering of thousands of Pokemon fans from all over the globe. Competitors, spectators and fans from nearly 50 countries attended in 2019. The opening ceremony typically includes announcements for new Pokemon games, movies and products. Rare, event-exclusive merch goes on sale and is instantly snatched up by collectors. One year the director and lead actors of Pokemon: Detective Pikachu showed up to do a smile and wave to the cheering crowd. The World Championship is essentially Pokemon’s San Diego Comic-Con, complete with big lines, cosplay, and overpriced nachos. That’s something that can’t be replicated online.
Photo by Joshua Yehl.
Speaking of moving things online, The Pokemon Company had to essentially reinvent the whole competitive tournament structure to make it an online-only experience. While fans are used to watching Pokemon instantly evolve into a new form in a dazzle of glowing light, the Pokemon competitive scene hasn’t transformed quite so gracefully in its move to online.
Unlike similar digital card games such as Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering Arena, Pokemon had never used its (rather dated) online client, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online for an official tournament, nor does it have a competitive ranked mode. Many players decried the qualification system for the Players Cup as being unfair for requiring an in-game currency, while others were confused by the rankings page that didn’t accurately display points earned.
Despite the rough qualification process, I managed to qualify to play in the Players Cup, but when one of my cards bugged out and caused me to lose a game I otherwise would have won, I felt dispirited and decided to not play the rest of the tournament. Much like having a card glitch in the middle of a match, The Pokemon Company is now being forced to deal with many issues that would have never occurred in real life.
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Despite a bumpy start, The Pokemon Company has made it clear they’ve heard the feedback and are dedicated to getting on the right path. The recent update to PTCGO includes a new way to enter tournaments and an adjusted ranking points system. There’s even a brand new Play! Pokemon podcast to engage the community despite everyone being stuck at home. Even Ash’s Charmander went through its testy Charmeleon phase, but now it feels like The Pokemon Company’s online competitive scene is well on its way to becoming a glorious Charizard.
I did spend the better part of a year competing to qualify for the 2020 Pokemon World Championships only for it to be canceled, but thankfully The Pokemon Company ensured players that all invites will rollover to 2021 Worlds. So I will eventually get the chance to compete for the top prize against a field of players from across the globe, and then go eat some of those overpriced nachos after I get knocked out on the first day. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot, a lot, a lot of time to practice. And when the world eventually does open up again, I truly can’t wait to head to my local card shop and get to see all my favorite Trainers again.
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Joshua is Senior Editor and Producer of Features at IGN. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
Welcome to Star Wars Week, where we’re celebrating all things from that galaxy far, far away. From retrospectives on old favorites to explainers on timely topics to Face-Offs between beloved characters and beyond, Star Wars Week features articles, videos, slideshows and more on the beloved franchise.
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Star Wars fans have never been more spoiled by new content. Since purchasing Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney has so far released five new theatrical movies, with more in development. And that’s to say nothing of the numerous TV series, video games, comics and novels in the works. There’s more Star Wars than you can shake a gaffi stick at.
But as older Star Wars fans remember, it wasn’t always like this. There was a fallow period in the late ’80s and early ’90s where there was very little new Star Wars content of any sort. In these dark times, it fell on a small group of intrepid creators like novelist Timothy Zahn and comic book writer Tom Veitch to keep the spark of Star Wars alive. Thus, the Expanded Universe was born.
Read on to learn how books like Heir to the Empire and comics like Dark Empire helped keep the flame of Star Wars burning in an era when no new movies were on the horizon. We’ve even turned to Zahn and Veitch themselves to learn more about their personal experiences in exploring a galaxy far, far away.
Books like Dark Empire helped keep the Star Wars flame burning after Return of the Jedi.
The Dark Times for Star Wars
Strictly in terms of the level of new content being produced, the latter half of the 1980s easily ranks as the lowest point for the Star Wars franchise. With Return of the Jedi having come and gone and creator George Lucas only offering cryptic clues as to his plans for a potential prequel trilogy, fans were faced with the likelihood that there would never be another Star Wars movie. Even the Special Editions were still a decade down the road.
Marvel’s monthly Star Wars comic also wrapped up in 1986. While former Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter famously credited Star Wars with saving the company following an industry-wide crash, it was clear by this point Star Wars simply didn’t carry the brand cache it once did.
It is worth remembering this is a period when the franchise made some of its earliest forays into the TV realm with the made-for-TV Ewoks movies and animated series Ewoks and Droids. However, neither those projects nor their corresponding toy lines did much to appeal to an aging fanbase who had largely moved on in the years following Return of the Jedi.
“Probably if I was thinking about it at all, I was thinking that way or maybe hoping George would make more movies, but everything seemed quiet,” Zahn told IGN. “The soundtracks were in my regular rotation… for music I played as I wrote. It was not like Star Wars was gone. Probably I just assumed, ‘OK if that’s all, but maybe they’ll be back.'”
Zahn’s relationship with Star Wars at that point seems typical of so many fans of his generation, but as fate would have it, he would play a key role in helping revive a series many assumed was dead and buried.
The Origin of the Expanded Universe
The idea of relying on comics and novels to expand upon the mythology of the Star Wars movies was hardly new, even in the 1980s. Acclaimed sci-fi writer Alan Dean Foster (who ghost-wrote Lucas’ novelization of A New Hope) penned the very first Star Wars spinoff novel in 1978, the Luke and Leia-focused Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. There’s also the aforementioned Marvel series, which spanned 107 issues and assorted specials between 1977 and 1986, as well as two trilogies of novels focused on the early years of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, respectively.
However, even at the time those projects had a dubious connection to the continuity of the films. As Foster once explained to Syfy Wire, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye only exists because he was contracted to pen a second Star Wars book that could serve as the basis for a low-budget, Harrison Ford-less movie sequel should A New Hope flounder at the box office.
Veitch and artist Cam Kennedy’s Dark Empire, along with Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, were the first in a new wave of Star Wars tie-ins that aimed to be more tonally and stylistically in line with the movies.
Veitch traces the genesis of what would eventually become Dark Empire to November 1988. He and Kennedy had recently completed work on The Light and Darkness War for Marvel’s now-defunct Epic Comics imprint. On a whim, and bolstered by the 1987 debut of West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Veitch wrote a letter to Lucas pitching him on the idea of a new series of Star Wars comics. Surprisingly, it worked.
[Note: Veitch was gracious enough to share a lengthy excerpt of his forthcoming book about the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and many of his quotes in this piece are taken from that excerpt and Veitch’s transcriptions of various Q&A sessions with fans.]
Veitch writes, “Three days later I got a phone call from a woman named Lucy Wilson [Lucasfilm’s Director of Publishing], who had worked for George since 1974, saying George wanted to see our work. I sent him the first three issues of L&D War and within a week we were offered the Star Wars comics franchise — not just the writing and art, you see, but the actual business itself of publishing new Star Wars comics!”
At the time, Marvel still held the comic publishing rights to the franchise, so Veitch began working with editor Archie Goodwin to craft a story pitch. As he recalls, they originally pitched two prequel stories – one dubbed “The Jedi Chronicles” set in the glory days of the Old Republic, and the other set in the aftermath of the Clone Wars, as the surviving Jedi were hunted down and slaughtered by Darth Vader. Bear in mind this was a full decade before Lucas began to flesh out the prequel era in The Phantom Menace.
Through Wilson, Lucas shot down both ideas, telling Veitch and Goodwin they had “carte blanche,” but only in the era set after Return of the Jedi. That seems to have been one of Lucas’ only firm rules at this nascent stage of the Expanded Universe. Eventually Veitch would get the chance to realize his Jedi Chronicles pitch in the form of Dark Horse’s Tales of the Jedi comics, a major source of inspiration for Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic games. But in 1988, the focus was all on the post-Return of the Jedi era.
Despite this auspicious start, however, it would be several years before Veitch’s first Star Wars project actually saw the light of day. As he explains, Goodwin left Marvel for DC in 1989, and with him left any desire at Marvel to rekindle the Star Wars line. It was only after Veitch introduced Wilson to Dark Horse Comics editor Mike Richardson that the wheels truly began moving again. The Star Wars franchise would soon shift to Dark Horse and remain there until finally returning to Marvel in 2015.
Veitch writes, “[Mike is] a masterful businessman, a powerful negotiator. In no time at all Lucasfilm had decided to pull the project from Marvel and give it to Dark Horse.”
Zahn’s entry point into the Expanded Universe during this period was much more straightforward. As he explains, he was simply approached by book publisher Bantam, which was stepping up its own efforts to capitalize on the mostly dormant Star Wars franchise.
“Some of the Star Wars writers say at panels how this was a dream come true,” said Zahn. “It was not a dream come true, because I never would have thought to dream it. It was not something I ever would have thought was even possible. When it was offered to me, it was, ‘Oh man, absolutely.’ Exciting, but also very scary, because I knew that if I didn’t get it right, you didn’t get the characters and the field of the universe right, the fans were not going to be happy with me.”
The Rise of Grand Admiral Thrawn
With Lucasfilm making it clear creators should stick to fleshing out the largely unexplored era after the events of the original trilogy, both Zahn and Veitch/Kennedy set about trying to determine what the Star Wars universe would look like a few years after the death of Emperor Palpatine. As Zahn reflects, his primary goal was “not wanting to do what George had already done.”
“I wanted to get something that felt like Star Wars, but wasn’t another Death Star, wasn’t another Admiral Ackbar, wasn’t another Vader or the Emperor, something new, something different,” said Zahn. “We hadn’t seen much in the way of Imperials who were certainly brilliant, aside from Vader and Palpatine.”
Zahn continued, “But [I was] looking at where we were left at the end [of] Return of the Jedi and extrapolating, what the politics are going to be like, what the military situations are going to be like, and then adding in characters who would fit the universe and feel like they were just maybe a little off camera during the movies.”
That was the catalyst behind the creation of Grand Admiral Thrawn, arguably Zahn’s most popular and enduring contribution to the franchise. Zahn told IGN he was loosely inspired by Julian Glover’s character General Veers, one of the few highly competent Imperial characters glimpsed in the original movies. Thrawn’s military efficiency was mixed with a heavy dose of Sherlock Holmes-esque brilliance and deductive reasoning. He’s also notable for being far more sympathetic than most of his colleagues, in part because of his unique status as an alien outsider in an otherwise xenophobic Empire. The result was an instant fan-favorite new villain.
Grand Admiral Thrawn first appeared in Heir to the Empire.
Heir to the Empire introduced several other characters who would go on to play a recurring role in the Expanded Universe, including smuggler Talon Karrde, Imperial Admiral Gilad Pellaeon and Emperor Palpatine’s former assassin, Mara Jade. Mara in particular struck a chord with readers, and she would go on to become one of the most pivotal EU characters as she abandoned her vendetta against Luke, joined his New Jedi Order and eventually married her ex-rival.
Zahn said, “Mara was originally my thought of how Palpatine would have reacted to Vader offering Luke an alliance at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, that he might want to get rid of Luke and send an agent to deal with him when he showed up to rescue Han at Jabba’s. That was the nub of an idea that eventually became Mara.”
Classic Villains Return
Similarly, Veitch writes, “The main point I made to George, at the time, was that I wanted to do something really mind-blowing. We wanted to include familiar characters, machines and environments, so the readers would feel right at home. But we also wanted to convey the feeling of continually unfolding imagination — just as the films did.”
While both Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire revolve around a mastermind villain rallying the divided Empire to attack the fledgling New Republic, Veitch opted to resurrect Emperor Palpatine himself rather than create a new villain a la Thrawn. According to Veitch, that plot twist had its origins in conversations with Goodwin, as the two bounced around the idea of a copycat villain wearing Darth Vader’s armor to boost the morale of the dwindling Imperial forces. But Lucas was adamant that Vader himself not be allowed to return, except via dream sequences or holographic recordings.
Eventually Veitch settled on bringing back Palpatine via cloning, similar to how the character would eventually make his in-canon return in The Rise of Skywalker. As he explains in his book, Veitch’s primary goal in bringing back Palpatine was to test Luke’s relationship with the Force and explore themes central to the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.
In his original Dark Empire pitch, Veitch wrote, “Sagaciously, Luke agrees to become the Emperor’s apprentice. He’s taking a great risk, but his strategy is to penetrate the Dark Side by learning some of its secrets. Our theory is that any significant conquest of the Dark Side of the Force would involve heroic assimilation of whole areas of the Emperor’s consciousness.”
Palpatine’s return has always been a divisive plot point within the Star Wars fan community, with some (including Zahn himself) arguing it diminishes Vader’s sacrifice and redemption in Return of the Jedi.
“I sympathize,” writes Veitch. “But these folks were probably unfamiliar with the history of movie serials and comics, where great villains never completely die — they always return. Star Wars, as you know, was partly based on Flash Gordon, a movie serial and comic strip in which the principal villain, the evil emperor Ming the Merciless, is never completely killed off.”
Dark Empire also resurrected another iconic villain in the form of Boba Fett, who resurfaces during the course of the story to seek revenge against Han Solo.
“Of course Fett had to come back,” Veitch writes. “That’s a no-brainer, imho. Fett was a fan-favorite — and a bounty hunter that ornery is not going to be defeated (or digested) by some giant sand-squid. We got zero resistance from LFL.”
A New Generation of Jedi
Both Zahn and Veitch arrived separately at the idea of a married Han and Leia becoming parents to Force-sensitive children – the first in a brand new generation of Jedi Knights. Zahn created twins Jacen and Jaina in his Thrawn trilogy, while Dark Empire introduced their younger brother Anakin. Anakin would play an even bigger role in Dark Empire’s sequels, as readers learned Palpatine hoped to claim the youngest Solo’s body as a permanent host after his own clone bodies began to fail him.
“My idea was to call him ‘Anakin’ because he would embody both the light and dark aspects of the Skywalker lineage and suffer great inner conflict in his life,” writes Veitch. “As it turned out, this was how [Lawrence] Kasdan and [J.J.] Abrams came to visualize Han and Leia’s son Ben aka Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. In their story, the Dark Side takes over the personality of Ben Solo.”
Veitch continues, “My idea was to explore the Light Side of the Force as far as we could go. And if you know your Joseph Campbell, awakening the Light is what he is all about. The ‘Dark Side’ is secondary to him. The hero’s journey is into the Light.”
Veitch seems to have a certain amount of regret over how Anakin’s arc was handled in later EU projects, as the character never truly grappled with his inner darkness in the way his brother Jacen would in the Legacy of the Force series. By that point Anakin had already been killed off, with the character repaying a debt to his dead uncle Chewbacca and making a heroic sacrifice in the climax of 2001’s The New Jedi Order: Star by Star.
“My plan was that the Light Side would win out in Anakin after inner battles between the two sides of his being,” writes Veitch. “As I understand it, subsequent writers chose to make the Light Side consistently strong in Anakin, and that he died a hero. I have no problem with that, but a lot of stories about Anakin’s inner conflict didn’t get told!”
The Expanded Universe’s Growing Pains
Given the similarities between the Thrawn Trilogy and the Dark Empire series, fans might assume Zahn and Veitch collaborated closely to help flesh out the post-Return of the Jedi timeline. However, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Both writers describe that period as a sort of lawless frontier for the franchise, where individual creators were largely allowed to blaze their own trails so long as they adhered to the handful of firm restrictions laid out by Lucasfilm. Naturally, that free-form approach had its downsides… downsides which became increasingly apparent as the success of Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire resulted in many more novels and comics being greenlit.
“There was not a lot of continuity control or keeping track of everything everybody was doing,” said Zahn. “Part of the reason for that, I think, is that I’m not sure anybody really expected the Thrawn trilogy to take off… And the fact that the fans were out there and anxious to get into anything they could that was Star Wars, I think caught people a bit by surprise. They didn’t have a system in place to monitor all the writers that were now being contracted to write new books and stories and games. And they had to feel their way along with that.”
Veitch recalls his story outline for Dark Empire was completed several months before Bantam recruited Zahn to write Heir to the Empire, and only later were there attempts by Bantam and Dark Horse to coordinate the two projects. According to Veitch, some even floated the idea of canceling Dark Empire in favor of a direct adaptation of Zahn’s Thrawn novels, a prospect he found less than appealing (Dark Horse would later greenlight comic book adaptations of the Thrawn Trilogy from other creative teams).
A portion of Veitch’s book is dedicated to exploring the creative conflicts between he and Zahn in 1990, as the two offered notes on each other’s projects and it became clear their respective visions for Star Wars didn’t necessarily align. While the duo integrated their ideas to arrive at a relatively unified take on the post-Return of the Jedi setting, they disagreed over concepts like the aforementioned resurrection of Palpatine, Dark Empire’s depiction of a “Force Storm” and the physics behind a Star Destroyer entering a planet’s atmosphere. Though as Veitch notes, the Star Destroyer debate was finally settled decades later when Rogue One showed one of the massive ships hovering above Jedha City. After these early, sometimes heated conversations, both writers were largely left to their own devices.
Veitch writes, “They sent me the manuscripts, so that I’d make sure our stories were coordinated. But I wasn’t asked to give any more notes — nor was he. The one good thing from our spirited exchange in 1990 was that everybody backed off and let Cam and I finish Dark Empire.”
Instead, it fell on various editors at Dark Horse, Bantam (and later Del Rey) and Lucasfilm itself to attempt to coordinate the ever-growing lineup of Star Wars projects and build a cohesive universe. This resulted in a fair amount of continuity hiccups, especially as the Star Wars prequels began to arrive and contradicted elements of the Expanded Universe. For example, the Thrawn books reference the Clone Wars, portraying that conflict as something wholly different from what’s depicted in the movies. The 2008 Clone Wars animated series was also especially problematic in this regard. It effectively rendered all of Dark Horse and Del Rey’s Clone Wars-era stories non-canon in one fell swoop, thanks to major changes like the introduction of Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan Ahsoka Tano and the reveal that Darth Maul survived his battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
With Lucas himself taking a hands-off approach to the EU, creators were forced to course-correct and adapt to new revelations in the movies and the TV series as they unfolded. In response, hardcore Star Wars fans coined terms like “G-canon” (stories created directly by Lucas) and “C-canon” (stories set within the wider Expanded Universe) to indicate how closely a particular EU project aligned with the movies.
The End of the Expanded Universe
Following Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm Ltd. in 2012, the new owner of Star Wars set about streamlining and overhauling a franchise that had grown leaps and bounds beyond what it was at the start of the Expanded Universe. One of Disney’s first acts was to bring the Expanded Universe to a close in 2014, using the debut of the animated series Star Wars Rebels and its prequel novel Star Wars: A New Dawn as the starting point for a new, unified Star Wars timeline. Existing EU stories were re-branded as “Star Wars Legends,” indicating they no longer take place in official continuity. The Lucasfilm Story Group was then established as a new authority to help establish and maintain a strict continuity linking new movies, TV series, comics, novels and video games.
Despite having so many of his own novels rendered non-canon by Disney, Zahn actually seems very happy with the new way of doing things under Disney. Zahn has maintained a consistent presence in the rebooted Star Wars line, penning an entirely new trilogy of Thrawn novels set before A New Hope. A second trilogy will begin with the release of Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising in September 2020.
Zahn said, “It’s really not a lot different, except that we now have more eyes on the project because we have – along with the Del Rey editor and the Lucasfilm editor – we also have the Story Group people to check the manuscripts for continuity, internal logic problems, things of that sort. And in general, the more competent eyes you’ve got in the project, the better it becomes. It adds to the time we have to assume it will take the Story Group to get to the project, because they’re dealing with everything else as well. But for me, it’s well worth it. I like having more people looking at the book before it gets out to the general public and finding all the stuff that I may have missed or the other editors missed. Just all of us have blind spots and the more people seeing it, the better chance those blind spots won’t slip through.”
Veitch, on the other hand, had left the Expanded Universe long before Disney wiped the slate clean. He makes it clear he has little desire to return.
“For several years it was sheer bliss. And that’s reflected in the work, I think,” he writes. “At some point, I think in 1995, it stopped being fun. But we had six great years. Maybe I will talk about all of that later.”
But while Zahn and Veitch’s respective Star Wars careers wound up having very different trajectories, both played instrumental roles in growing and revitalizing the franchise at its lowest point. Without stories like Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire, there may never have been the Star Wars boom in the mid-’90s that paved the way for Kenner’s Power of the Force toy line, the Shadows of the Empire multimedia event, the Special Edition re-releases and eventually a whole new era of movies and TV series. In true Joseph Campbell fashion, Star Wars journeyed through the dark and emerged in the light once more.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Since the launch of Season 5, Call of Duty: Warzone has been riddled with several graphical glitches and bugs. Everything from bizarre player and gun textures, to the map barely loading in at all. Not to mention the rampant hackers with aimbots and clipping abilities. Still, the Warzone community carries on and trudges through another week before any hotfixes are released. In this video Richie goes over 5 glitchy moments of the week.
In our first clip from Krushed Muffins, we see what Verdansk looks like with about 50% of the map loaded in. Instead of getting booted, Muffinz is able to not only proceed, but land on the train with his squad- and even pick up a weapon. Unfortunately the gun he finds has a weird glitched scope that doesn’t allow him to see who or what he’s shooting at. Next up is a clip from Reddit user leggoMUHeggo36. He finds an enemy player and takes a shot using his RPG. While it looks like he made contact, the enemy in question suddenly disappears! Leggo doesn’t get awarded a kill, and the enemy is never seen again.
At number 3, we have iComshot’s clip of a strange new…operator? After being hunted down, iComshot sees his opponent face to face and discovers a graphical mess of a glitch. This is a common glitch for players and weapons, and normally makes the game unplayable, but somehow, this enemy still came out on top. Number 2 comes to us from Urbanpod on Reddit. After deploying from the Warzone plane, Urban lands without a weapon. Even stranger is when he suddenly gets sent to the gulag for seemingly no reason at all! Our final spot on the list goes to Heade from Youtube. After facing off against a hacking team, Heade’s squad wins by the skin of their teeth with a hail Mary C4 explosive. The team takes the victory and the lobby afterwards is excited to say the least.
Best Buy’s new anniversary sale has kicked off, and this one goes all weekend. From now until Sunday, August 16, you can snag a number of great deals on games for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One as well as Switch accessories, iPads, and MacBook Pros. Many of the deals come with free shipping and can arrive as early as next week.
A number of multiplatform games are also discounted, including Borderlands 3 for $15, Control for $32, and the recently released Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath Kollection for $40. Control is an excellent game to jump into right now, especially with the upcoming Alan Wake expansion on the horizon. The Aftermath Collection is a great deal as well, as it includes Mortal Kombat 11, all of its DLC fighters, and the new Aftermath expansion, which adds on to the base game’s story.
If you’ve wanted to snag yourself an iPad or MacBook Pro, you can save a good chunk of change on both. Of course, these are only a few of the deals available this weekend, so be sure to check out Best Buy for the full anniversary sale.
These PowerA wired Nintendo Switch controllers are an excellent budget option for anyone who’s looking for another controller. The controllers feature soft rubber grips and a 10-foot removable USB cable, so you can sit back and relax anywhere in your gaming area.
Best Buy has a number of Nintendo Switch cases on sale this weekend. PowerA’s Poke Ball and Pikachu cases feature hard outer shells and soft inner padding, while RDS Industries’ Zelda case has a faux-leather exterior.
If you’re looking for a Nintendo Switch case with a little more heft and compartment space, then this Pikachu commuter case is perfect. Not only can it carry your Switch or Switch Lite, but it also has room for 14 game cards and a number of accessories, thanks to its multiple storage pockets, Velcro straps, and front compartment.
The iPad Air is the second most powerful model of iPad, and right now, you can snag yourself Apple’s excellent tablet for $100 off. Best Buy is discounting the 256GB iPad Air models, which come in Space Gray, Gold, and Silver variants.
Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops are great portable notebooks that can also handle some heavy workloads, including video and audio production. Right now, Best Buy has some excellent deals on a number of MacBook Pro models, saving you up to $300. Each discounted MacBook Pro is also the latest model, which features a touch bar.
If you’re looking for a laptop to use for school or work, then this 17.3-inch HP notebook has you covered. It boasts a 10th-gen i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. That means it’s more than capable of handling your studies, workdays, or even your entertainment when you need to relax.
Monster Energy has launched a promotion to tie in with Halo Infinite, despite the game’s delay into a to-be-determined date in 2021. By collecting limited-edition Halo Infinite cans, you can get Double XP points to use sometime next year.
The special-edition Halo-themed cans will be available through December 31, 2020, which probably made more sense when the game was expected to be out by then. At any rate, you can stock up on Double XP points now, as well as use an exclusive Snapchat filter. Collecting all three Snapchat codes each month will get you an exclusive weapon. The announcement says you can redeem them at Monster-Halo.com, but the site isn’t live yet as of the time of writing.
Your receipts will also give you entry into a grand prize drawing. Ten entrants will win a trip for two to Paris, France plus $1000 cash to spend there. That would presumably be scheduled for sometime after France lifts travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Another 200 winners will get an Xbox Series X.
343 Industries said the delay was necessary to give the team “adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision.” No new date has been announced. Microsoft paired the announcement with word that the Xbox Series X will launch in November, touting the “thousands of games to play, spanning four generations” that will be available to play.
Veitch traces the genesis of what would eventually become Dark Empire to November 1988. He and Kennedy had recently completed work on The Light and Darkness War for Marvel’s now-defunct Epic Comics imprint. On a whim, and bolstered by the 1987 debut of West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Veitch wrote a letter to Lucas pitching him on the idea of a new series of Star Wars comics. Surprisingly, it worked.
While both Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire revolve around a mastermind villain rallying the divided Empire to attack the fledgling New Republic, Veitch opted to resurrect Emperor Palpatine himself rather than create a new villain a la Thrawn. According to Veitch, that plot twist had its origins in conversations with Goodwin, as the two bounced around the idea of a copycat villain wearing Darth Vader’s armor to boost the morale of the dwindling Imperial forces. But Lucas was adamant that Vader himself not be allowed to return, except via dream sequences or holographic recordings.
“My idea was to call him ‘Anakin’ because he would embody both the light and dark aspects of the Skywalker lineage and suffer great inner conflict in his life,” writes Veitch. “As it turned out, this was how [Lawrence] Kasdan and [J.J.] Abrams came to visualize Han and Leia’s son Ben aka Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. In their story, the Dark Side takes over the personality of Ben Solo.”
“There was not a lot of continuity control or keeping track of everything everybody was doing,” said Zahn. “Part of the reason for that, I think, is that I’m not sure anybody really expected the Thrawn trilogy to take off… And the fact that the fans were out there and anxious to get into anything they could that was Star Wars, I think caught people a bit by surprise. They didn’t have a system in place to monitor all the writers that were now being contracted to write new books and stories and games. And they had to feel their way along with that.”
