Marvel playing games

 

If you've been keeping up to date with the state of modern Superhero movies, you'll know that things are kind of past the hill. The novelty of seeing well-written and action packed heroes that live up to the image and emotional resonance of their comic counterparts has passed and right now the only entertainment from that world which seems to land differs wildly from that formula or straight up mocks it. Audiences have grown tired, Marvel have grown complacent and I'm increasingly growing more interested in seeing if James Gunn has what it takes to revive this thing over on the DC end of the industry rather than seeing where Marvel go next. Which means that for the big M they need another lucrative end to shore up the sustainability of their multimedia brand. Too bad they screwed up in the games department then, isn't it?

It really is a surprise how difficult it is for those not from the gaming world to establish themselves within it- I guess that goes to show how vastly different this medium is to those producers used to micromanaging movies and TV.  Disney famously threw up their hands after years of trying to break into games through movie license titles that never seemed to hit it off as big as their movies did despite the apparent record breaking potential profits within the gaming landscape- which I can only imagine set off the house of mouse. Star Wars was caught up in that gaming ban and although Marvel has been a bit more lenient lately- there's a distinct desire not to get too caught up in this world. They want to edge their toes in by picking effective partners, you're not going to see a 'Marvel Games Studio' pop up anytime soon. (Shame, that could be pretty cool.)

We've seen oodles of mobile Marvel games go belly up in recent years as none can quite find the purchase they need to make a splash. Marvel Snap pretty much only succeeded because they got the literal godfather of online card-battler games to whip it together for them- everything else had been shut down and forgotten about. Genuine quality titles like Marvel's Midnight Suns and Guardian's of the Galaxy got totally overlooked by the public and flopped- and their giant push down the misguided route to 'easy money' route in Avengers ended up failing so badly it's death became the knell to all Live Service titles. We hold up it's corpse as a warning to the others!

The thing is- Marvel really could have an easy route into the game's industry if only they were to put in just a little bit of effort and actually observed the industry around them. What is making the big bucks nowdays? Well we're seeing a lot of remakes and remasters, aren't we? Marvel has a huge backlog of quality games that they won't even front the money to have listed on storefronts anymore! Ultimate Alliance, all the old Spiderman games, X-Men Legends... all games that, with a little TLC, would stamp Marvel back on the map powered by nostalgia alone. Hell I would consume an X-Men Legends re-release working on modern systems! And wouldn't that be a 100% safe way for a newly formed Marvel Game Studios to establish themselves as an up and coming studio for the new age? Should I charge a consulting fee?

Right now the 'licencing' method really is scoring more flops than wins and without a reputation to build off even the great titles are going to keep getting poor adoption numbers. Sony's Spiderman doesn't ride off it's name at Marvel but the reputation of Sony single player titles coupled with the excellence of Insomniac Games- their continued success provides little more than a false sense of brand health for Marvel proper; which is why I am so very sceptical about the upcoming two single player titles that Marvel is throwing their everything behind. EA Motive have been working on an Iron Man game for so long now that I already thought the thing had dropped and bombed- their marketing has sunk like a stone with nothing to show for I and I sniffing the wafts of development troubles from this prolonged silence. And Black Panther versus Captain America- or whatever it's called... same problem- they refuse to show us an inch of gameplay- what am I supposed to make of that?

Now it should be said that the Iron Man team are exceedingly talented, Motive were the guys that helmed the excellent Dead Space remake so they really do know what they're doing. I think the game is going to be worth checking out at the very least- but is it going to draw the audience that it should? With the weight of Marvel's growing sense of dispassion among it's fans and the general distaste for Marvel branded products- I think the brand might end up being something of a detriment to the title's image at first. Motive are going to be in an uphill marketing struggle to get the game it's appreciation, which luckily they have the leverage to pull given that their last game is considered something of a masterpiece of a remake. But the Black Panther game? That's a different story.

Cliffhanger games are a brand new studio developed to create AAA titles, only theirs appears to be one of the only such studios that doesn't boast about the pedigree of it's staff on it's socials. Typically you'll see name drops of the various big companies that came together to form this new studio that will be around for a couple of games until their first flop and dissolution. Cliffhanger doesn't even have that to lean on. All they have are these high fidelity Unreal 5 trailers that get people going "ohh" and "ahh" but share nothing about the game we're supposed to be getting excited for. The bar is high and if this game doesn't play buttery smooth in it's gameplay reveal there will be cries of 'downgrade!' echoing across the industry for it's entire launch window. I'm not sure Black Panther is going to rise to it's occasion right now- but it's hard to make any predictions when we have diddly squat to go off.

These are both risky endeavours that take the control out of Marvel's hands because they, like Disney, consider the gaming world too complicated to get hands-on with- but it doesn't need to be! Remasters are a great way to build a small team of dedicated brand-loyal developers who understand how to play into the emotions that made gaming fun all those years ago- and their output is a decently low risk why to build a reputation and earn some success. If Marvel really are serious about getting into gaming like they suggest, then putting themselves in the ring a bit more, rather than waging these endless proxy titles, will go a long way to establishing that trust with the audience that earns goodwill. Black Myth Wukong didn't sell 10 million in it's first week out of nowhere- it built a respect the world over across the course of years. It won't take long for Marvel to do the same. Stop playing games, Feige- get serious!