Stuart Dredge 

Star Wars meets Clash of Clans in free-to-play Star Wars: Commander game

Disney and Lucasfilm team up for new mobile game enabling players to pick their side in the Galactic Civil War. By Stuart Dredge
  
  

Star Wars: Commander mobile game features some iconic units.
Star Wars: Commander mobile game features some iconic units. Photograph: PR

The lucrative success of mobile game Clash of Clans is spawning a wave of similar “base-building” games, including a new title based on Star Wars.

Star Wars: Commander was released today for iPhone and iPad, with other devices to follow at a later date. It’s a joint effort between Disney – the new owner of the Star Wars brand – and Lucasfilm.

The game follows the Clash of Clans formula of players constructing bases, then attacking those of other players while defending their own. The game is free to play, but funded by in-app purchases of virtual currency to speed up progress.

The twist here is that the bases are initially on the familiar arid landscape of Tatooine; the military units include TIE Fighters, Stormtroopers and AT-ATs; and characters from Han Solo and Chewbacca through to Darth Vader pop up to lend a hand.

“For the team, this has been an opportunity of a lifetime to work with the Lucasfilm team and build a game set in the Star Wars universe,” Disney Interactive’s executive producer and vice president of operations, Nathan Etter, told The Guardian ahead of the game’s release.

“We thought about what the core tenets of Star Wars are: the really cool things that we want to bring to life and let players experience. And here, that’s experiencing what it’s like to be a battlefield commander on either the Empire or Rebel side.”

That’s another key selling point of the game, which is set within the Galactic Civil War of episodes IV, V and VI of the Star Wars films – the original three movies. Players start the game as independent, but early on get to choose which side to throw their lot in with.

“Playing for the Empire, you have this mechanised might and amazing ground forces, but on the other side, you’re scrappier, but there are also these iconic characters like Chewie and Princess Leia that can team up with you to go after the Empire,” said Etter.

For a Star Wars fan, there is plenty of detail to geek out over, with more to come. Etter said that while the game has a clearly-defined place in the Star Wars history, players will be able to unlock units and technologies from past eras: “Some vehicles that the rebels may have put together harking back to the Clone Wars days,” as he put it.

Star Wars: Commander can be compared to another recent mobile game based on a big film brand – The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-Earth – which did a good job of using key moments from the film (and book, of course) that it was based on to anchor its narrative, which was then fleshed out with new plotlines and characters.

Star Wars: Commander is taking a similar approach: it’s a new story that regularly intersects with some of the familiar events from the films.

“We’re not attempting to retell the story of the movies, but to tell some side-stories of things that were going on in this period, bringing some new things to light about what was happening in the Star Wars universe, on Tatooine, and eventually on other planets,” said Etter.

“When the well-known characters intersect with these stories, it does bring authenticity, but we know fans also want to experience something new and fresh,” added Matt Fillbrandt, executive producer at Lucasfilm. “It’s a great opportunity for us to tell some new stories in the Star Wars universe.”

What about the elephant in the room: Clash of Clans? Sceptics may take one look at the screenshots for Star Wars: Commander and label it a clone, just as they may the upcoming Call of Duty: Heroes, which also resembles Supercell’s mobile hit.

“Base-building and combat-style games have been around for decades, even on PC with RTS [real-time strategy] games, and have evolved over time,” said Etter, fielding the Clash of Clans question with good grace.

“We felt that it was a style of gameplay that suited Star Wars very well: you see throughout the films these ground-assault battles. And when people think about Star Wars, they think about those armies of Stormtroopers, so it fits very naturally.”

What does this new game add to the genre beyond its brand and some admittedly-iconic characters? Etter points to the narrative again – new storylines within the universe of Star Wars – while also talking up the work that has gone in to the player-v-player (PvP) element of Star Wars: Commander, with its squads (not clans), chat and battle-matching features.

How about the free-to-play aspect? Freemium games remain a heated topic for traditional gamers, if not necessarily within the wider community of people actually playing these games and buying their in-app purchases.

For all the appeal of Star Wars: Commander to fans, if it get the freemium formula wrong – too aggressive with its requirements for players to pay and/or too annoying with progression timers that make free players wait – it could be huge turn-off for precisely those people.

“All of the content is accessible to anyone who wants to install and play through the game: you can get to all the [solo] campaign content, and you can play PvP. You are able to buy crystals to accelerate timers if you’re in a rush and want to progress faster, but all the content can be unlocked by anybody,” said Etter.

“We’re also very cognisant that this is a competitive game, with that player-v-player component. It’s important to us that there isn’t a pay-to-win strategy, so we make it a level playing field for everyone who’s playing the game.”

The science of free-to-play is still in its early days, and it’s easy to get wrong. The powerful incentive for Disney and Lucasfilm to get it right is the stink that would ensue if fans felt Star Wars: Commander was a joyless money-milker. Time will tell if the companies have avoided that fate.

The game is exclusive to iOS for now – a status that usually precludes developers from announcing dates for other platforms like Android. No change here: “It’s exclusive first on iOS, but it will eventually be coming to other platforms. I can’t say when, but it will eventually,” said Fillbrandt.

Star Wars is on a good run of warmly-received mobile games at the moment, from remakes like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and new spin-offs with mobile developer partners like the two Angry Birds Star Wars games (with Rovio) and Star Wars: Tiny Death Star (with NimbleBit).

“Sometimes with games like Angry Birds and Tiny Death Star, we can bring a little more whimsy to Star Wars and have fun with it in ways that the fans appreciate,” said Fillbrandt.

“They know the IP and the characters, with so many iconic elements about this cultural phenomenon, that there are times we can take a little bit of a left turn with our other products. But with games like Commander, we can also come back to our roots.”

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