Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures

» see swcwa.station.sony.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

star wars: clone wars adventures was a browser-based virtual world built by sony online entertainment for kids watching the clone wars animated series on cartoon network. it launched on 15 september 2010, six months into the show's third season, and it stitched together customizable avatars, jedi-themed minigames and a station-cash microtransaction store into what SOE called a persistent lightsaber-and-podracing playground.

the game rode the same F2P kids-MMO wave as toontown, club penguin and free realms. SOE reported ten million registered accounts across the run, mostly under 14. cross-promotion with cartoon network kept a steady trickle of new signups every time a new clone wars episode aired. the license came from lucasarts, and every station cash purchase carried a rev-share back to lucasfilm.

this one is a US-first kid product from top to bottom. clone wars was on cartoon network US and its dubs came later abroad; the game marketing chain ran through nickelodeon-adjacent US media rather than any tv channel a turkish 8-year-old would have been watching. i was 26 when this launched, an engineering student on the wrong continent for its promotion cycle. everything i can say about it comes from post-mortems.

~ the record ~

~ the fall ~

the license cut into every dollar. the microtransaction take was strong at launch, then softened as the whedon-era first-wave players aged out of the demo and the show itself moved from cartoon network to disney XD when disney bought lucasfilm in 2012. new content slowed after that. SOE tried to hold the base with subscription-only zones and cheaper station cash bundles. neither moved the numbers back.

~ the day it died ~

on 24 january 2014 sony online entertainment announced it was closing four games. clone wars adventures and free realms would go down on 31 march. vanguard: saga of heroes and wizardry online would follow on 31 july. SOE gave the reason as needing to refocus resources, which in the trade press was read as SOE preparing for what became the daybreak spin-off a year later.

~ what got buried with it ~

in the final weeks SOE gave every account jedi membership for free, dropped every station cash item to one cash, and let the whole population run around unlocking cosmetics for the last two months. it read less like a shutdown and more like a party that knew the lights would go out at midnight. the servers went dark on the night of 31 march 2014.

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