The Clone Wars Adventures entered into public beta over the weekend and a few lucky Techland readers will be winning the chance to be amongst the first to play. The new virtual worlds is a partnership between LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment who are building off the success of the similar free-to-play virtual world Free Realms. Matt Higby, lead designer on Clone Wars Adventures, answered some questions about crafting entry-level Star Wars exploits.
What does Star Wars mean to you? Aside from a job? How has it inspired you as a piece of fiction?
Star Wars is one of those unique franchises that resonates with so many different people in so many different ways. I myself have found that over time the parts of Star Wars that really stick with me have changed; as a kid I was, of course, interested in the battles and creatures, as I grew older I became more interested in the design of the ships, and eventually the characters and their interactions. As a game developer I find that I’m really inspired by the overall universe crafting in Star Wars, building a cohesive and interesting fictional universe is a pretty impressive feat, and the fact that Star Wars has managed to stay so relevant and find its way into so many avenues of culture for decades is incredibly inspiring to me as a fellow fantasy crafter.
Do you think there’s an essential difference in how kids and adults experience the Star Wars mythos?
Based only on my personal experience, I can say definitely yes. I grew up in the 80s and never saw the original trilogy when they made their first run through theaters, I remember my first time watching Star Wars after I checked them out of the library during a Summer visiting my grandparents and desperately trying to figure out why the library didn’t have the first three parts. As a kid I was far less interested in the “why” behind the events I was watching, there were good guys and bad guys, but as you get older I think a lot of subtlety about the characters and their motivations becomes more apparent and you definitely start to pick up on new aspects of the fiction.
When were you able to share Star Wars with your children? What was their reaction?
I don’t have any kids yet! But I recently shared Star Wars with my fiancé for the first time – I know right? – I had a tough time keeping her interested for the first half hour or so, but after that she dug it.
How have you tailored Clone Wars Adventures to home in on that?
Well, we’ve designed the game around a younger audience from the get go. That means we get players quickly into playing games, and we don’t make them jump through any hoops to try the games they want to play.
Contest: Win a Beta Code for Clone Wars Adventures
Clone Wars is the most visible piece of Star Wars entertainment now. What do you hope the experience will be in your game for the players who come here from watching the show?
One of the things we’ve tried to do with Clone Wars Adventures is to look at every possible fantasy that you could have from watching the series; flying a Star Fighter in a massive space battle, zipping across a frozen landscape in a Speederbike, having an epic Lightsaber battle, or taking on waves of enemy Battle Droids, and turn those moments into interactive games that the fans can experience for themselves. Our goal really is to make games for every type of Clone Wars fan, if you’re more interested in strategic games we have those, action games, we have those too and they’re all tied in a unique way into something that happens in the Clone Wars universe.
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!