The Force is with Singapore.

The Republic's computer game and animation industry has been given a boost with its involvement in the next big Star Wars franchise, The Clone Wars.

The Singapore studio of Lucasfilm Animation is making the Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance game for the Nintendo DS handheld platform.

It also had a hand in the creation of the Clone Wars TV series. Both will have their worldwide launch in a few months' time.

The Clone Wars is Star Wars creator George Lucas' next project and is set in the period between the second episode of the hit movie franchise, The Attack Of The Clones, and the third, Revenge Of The Sith.

It is a 3D-animation series comprising a movie, a TV series and two video games.

The movie will be released in August; the TV series, which will be shown on Cartoon Network, will be launched in October, while the Jedi Alliance and a game for the Wii console - The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels - will both be released during the year-end holiday season.

Jedi Alliance is a made-in-Singapore product as it was conceptualised, designed and developed by the games division of Lucasfilm Animation's studio at Changi Business Park.

This is Lucasfilm's first studio outside the United States and was started three years ago. Lucasfilm owns the majority of the Singapore studio, although the Economic Development Board (EDB) and Creative Technology also have investments in it.

Lucasfilm Singapore's staff strength has grown to 260 employees from 40 countries. It has several divisions, of which the 72-member games division is one. Half the games team is made up of Singaporeans.

Mr Keh Choon Wee, 32, one of the Singaporean digital artists at the studio, said: "It's a dream come true for me."

In the Jedi Alliance, players control two out of six Jedis who include Anakin, Obi-wan Kenobi, Mace Windu and Anakin's new apprentice Ahsoka Tano. It is both a single-player as well as two-player co-operative game.

Mr Feargus Carroll, head of Lucasfilm Singapore's games division, told The Sunday Times that the game will expand on the main storyline from the TV series and promises "stunning graphics".

He said the aesthetics are so good that it is more of a console game like the PlayStation 2 than the Nintendo DS handheld game.

He added that he had to hire a lot of foreign talent because "while there was plenty of raw talent in Singapore, experienced talent was lacking".

"Singapore does not have people who have been making games for like 10 to 15 years. But I think that in 10 years, with games like Jedi Alliance, Singapore will have the talent it needs," he said.

The game may be made for the small screen, but it marks a huge milestone in Singapore's games development industry. This is the first major brand-name games title produced in Singapore for the global market.

The closest success story is Koei Singapore, the local studio of the Japanese games maker which launched the made-in-Singapore Romance Of The Three Kingdoms online game in March for the Japanese market. An English version is being planned for release in Singapore soon.

Mr Manohar Khiatani, assistant managing director of the EDB, said he was delighted with the successful development of the Clone Wars game and that it underscores Singapore's growing position as a location for developing high-quality digital content.

The EDB announced at the end of 2005 that it has committed $1 billion over the next 10 years to boost the digital media industry to a $10billion-a-year industry by 2018.

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This article was first published in The Sunday Times on 29 June 2008.