You guys have had great success in free-to-play virtual worlds like Free Realms. What lessons did you apply to Clone Wars Adventures?
Free Realms gave us a serious head-start in terms of understanding what worked for our age group. Most of the lessons we learned had to do with basic interface, controls and other usability concerns. One big thing that folks will notice right away is how our camera works. For many MMO players it feels restrictive to not be able to move the camera around, but one of the biggest barriers that a lot of kids have in gaming is 3d controls, so we’ve made it so that you can navigate in the 3d world in a much simpler 2d orientated way. We’ve refined quite a bit by using a lot of usability testing time and have found that kids pick up the game controls significantly faster now.
Do you have a personal favorite amongst the activities and the mini-games CWA will have?
I have several! I really love our Starfighter game because it creates these fantastic cinematic scenes that make you feel like you’re watching battles unfold in the show or one of the movies. I also really enjoy playing our Saber Strike game, it’s a physics based game that involves equal degrees of timing, control and luck which feels really compelling to me.
Exclusive: First Look at Clone Wars Adventures Mini-game Attack Cruiser
How did Clone Wars Adventures come about? Did the initial idea come from LucasArts to Sony Online Entertainment first, or vice versa?
It was a little bit of both. We have a longstanding relationship with the folks at LucasArts and they were able to see an early version of Free Realms, both parties became excited at the idea of bringing Clone Wars and the Free Realms tech together and it all worked out from there.
Does CWA fit into the show’s continuity at all?
Not specifically, however, lots of events that take place in the show will carry over to the game world. When a new big battle is fought on the show you might be able to log in and play through that battle in one of our games that night. We’ve been given a lot of visibility into upcoming plots and characters so we’ve been building content around the upcoming seasons of The Clone Wars. This is a really unique opportunity to build our game out as the show evolves and it’s really exciting to see it all coming together.
What’s the most pivotal moment in the prequel trilogy for you? In the original trilogy?
I think the entire sequence on Dagobah in Empire was really important for Luke, he starts off as this sort of impetuous kid in New Hope, then he becomes a hotshot hero with a bit of a chip on his shoulder at the beginning of Empire. Yoda basically shows him how little he knows and how far he has yet to go, it’s a really humbling experience. In the prequels all the most meaningful moments for me are about Anakin and his attachment issues, you start to see him trying to hold on more and more to things he can’t control, and each time he slips a little further into darkness.
Are there pockets of the Clone Wars universe that players will learn more about through the game?
We’ve talked a lot about exposing more information about characters from the show through the game. I don’t want to reveal too much, but there is definitely a possibility!