Opinion: Star Wars, Avengers, and the Sad State of Disney Licensed Games

Anyone who has set foot in a casino has probably seen a licensed slot machine. They tend to line the walls, sporting decals covered with familiar characters and logos, churning out characteristic noises and theme music. They're recognizable, iconic, inviting. But at their core, they're soulless time wasters designed to entertain in the short term while ceaselessly tempting money of consumers in the long. Such is the current fate of Star Wars and Marvel games on mobile.With a few exceptions--looking mainly at you, pinball--an overwhelming majority of both Star Wars and Marvel games on mobile are as cynical as the villains in each respective franchise. 

We live in a capitalist society, and I'm not necessarily bothered by the notion of a company chasing the almighty dollar. That's what companies do. Instead, I'm bothered by the tendencies of each to do little more than stretch out a glossy licensed veneer over a soulless free-to-play trap. 

Remember Tiny Death Star? It's no longer available on the App Store, but at one time, it was the Star Wars version of the overwhelmingly popular management game Tiny Tower. In Tiny Death Star, players acted as one of the top brass in the Galactic Empire, building new additions onto the deadly super weapon while also assigning various stormtrooper and officer units to different tasks. Tiny Death Star was free-to-play, often in somewhat questionably explotative ways. But there's a key difference here; it never surrendered the soul of Star Wars and had an earnest, genuine quality to it. Star Wars (and Marvel) lends itself well to many different styles and genres of games, and Tiny Death Star's cheery, approachable nature was as endearing as it was engrossing. 

Even the original Angry Birds Star Wars crossover had some earnestness to it. Of course it was a shameless crossover meant to capitalize on the fans of Star Wars, the runaway success of Angry Birds and the newly-developed tech in Angry Birds Space. But there wasn an attempt on the behalf of the developers to assign each type of character with a Star Wars theme, be it lightsabers, cloaks, stormtrooper helmets, or Princess Leia's famed double buns. It was Angry Birds, but the flavors of Star Wars were still very much evident. 

Now, many of the games available on mobile feel like "me too" copycats attempting to mix the popularity of massive licenses with familiar elements of chart-topping hits like Clash of Clans. 

Star Wars Uprising might be the only realistic objection here, since it is a wholly mediocre dungeon-crawling RPG featuring Star Wars races and locations. But Uprising had heart, a sense of earnest desire at its core to be a truly great Diablo clone set in a galaxy far, far away. 

The same cannot be said of the others. Star Wars: Commander - Worlds in Conflict is a base building strategy game with a core concept that appears in line with the Star Wars philosophy, but is a time- and money-sink through its exploitative microtransactions. Players hit a difficulty wall head-on when they don't invest money into their bases, and the whole economy creates a system of haves and have nots punishing those who don't choose to feed money into its hungry mechanics. 

Galaxy of Heroes is a strategy game featuring iconic and timeless characters and heroes in the Star Wars universe, but even that feels like a hollow attempt to marry a so-so strategy game with the true essence of Star Wars. It's like being on a themed ride at an amusement park; the setting, characters, and situations might be familiar, but they're all little more than wires and steel frames going through the motions. 

And don't even get me started on the card trader app, an entire program asking people to chip in real momey to purchase and trade intangible JPEGs images. 

The Avengers sadly haven't fared well either, mostly limited to poor film adaptations, hero battle games like Avengers Alliance, management games like Avengers Academy, and meager fighting games like Contest of Champions. There's an eerie amount of parity between the games flaunting both the Star Wars and Marvel banners. It's as if there are a set list of game templates massive entertainment studios can plaster with a popular franchise and flip around to draw in money. Ther's little care or thought put into the design to make them into something congruent to the values and themes these franchises embody.  

Perhaps it wouldn't be such an egregious oversight if there were better alternatives available on other platforms. DC Comics has done a markedly beter job with just the Batman property by letting developer Rocksteady take the Dark Knight's world and build amazing action games around it. 

Star Wars has a somewhat promising future in store, (although we're more than happy to donate a few suggestions to them), but nether the Avengers nor Guardians of the Galaxy have any meaningful or notable games available on other platforms outside of the LEGO games and Disney Infinity. 

It's a sad reality coinciding with a time-honored tradition of licensed games being churned out to capitalize on the release of major movies. But that shouldn't serve as an excuse anymore, especially because we've seen many of these franchises adapted into fantastic games. It's bizarre to consider, seeing as both are blockbuster mega franchises pulling in more money than even Scrooge McDuck could swim across. They both mean something to fans, and meticulous care has been invested in making sure the different media adaptations are as accurate and faithful to their source material as possible. Why not treat their video games the same way?